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Opinion of Scalia, J.
rights elsewhere conferred." Baker v. McCollan, 443 U. S. 137, 144, n. 3 (1979). In this respect § 1983 is, so to speak, a prism through which many different lights may pass. Unlike Justice Souter, I believe that, in analyzing this cause of action for Seventh Amendment purposes, the proper focus is on the prism itself, not on the particular ray that happens to be passing through in the present case.
The Seventh Amendment inquiry looks first to the "nature of the statutory action." Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc., 523 U. S. 340, 348 (1998). The only "statutory action" here is a § 1983 suit. The question before us, therefore, is not what common-law action is most analogous to some generic suit seeking compensation for a Fifth Amendment taking, but what common-law action is most analogous to a § 1983 claim. The fact that the breach of duty which underlies the particular § 1983 claim at issue here—a Fifth Amendment takings violation—may give rise to another cause of action besides a § 1983 claim, namely, a so-called inverse condemnation suit, which is (according to Part IV- A-2 of Justice Kennedy's opinion) or is not (according to Justice SouterTMs opinion) entitled to be tried before a jury, seems to me irrelevant. The central question remains whether a § 1983 suit is entitled to a jury. The fortuitous existence of an inverse-condemnation cause of action is surely not essential to the existence of the § 1983 claim. Indeed, for almost all § 1983 claims arising out of constitutional violations, no alternative private cause of action does exist— which makes it practically useful, in addition to being theoretically sound, to focus on the prism instead of the refracted light.
This is exactly the approach we took in Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U. S. 261 (1985)—an opinion whose analysis is so precisely in point that it gives this case a distinct quality of déjà vu. Wilson required us to analogize § 1983 actions to common-law suits for a different purpose: not to determine applicability of the jury-trial right, but to identify the rele-
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