846
Opinion of the Court
damages obviously implicates the Seventh Amendment jury trial rights of absent class members.22 We noted in Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U. S. 531 (1970), that since the merger of law and equity in 1938, it has become settled among the lower courts that "class action plaintiffs may obtain a jury trial on any legal issues they present." Id., at 541. By its nature, however, a mandatory settlement-only class action with legal issues and future claimants compromises their Seventh Amendment rights without their consent.
Second, and no less important, mandatory class actions aggregating damages claims implicate the due process "principle of general application in Anglo-American jurisprudence that one is not bound by a judgment in personam in a litigation in which he is not designated as a party or to which he has not been made a party by service of process," Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U. S. 32, 40 (1940), it being "our 'deep-rooted historic tradition that everyone should have his own day in court,' " Martin v. Wilks, 490 U. S. 755, 762 (1989) (quoting 18 C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4449, p. 417 (1981)); see Richards v. Jefferson County, 517 U. S. 793, 798-799 (1996). Although " '[w]e have recognized an exception to the general rule when, in certain limited circumstances, a person, although not a party, has his interests adequately represented by someone with the same interests who is a party," or "where a special remedial scheme exists expressly foreclosing successive litigation by nonlitigants, as for example in bankruptcy or probate," Martin, supra, at 762, n. 2 (citations omitted), the burden of justification rests on the exception.
The inherent tension between representative suits and the day-in-court ideal is only magnified if applied to damages claims gathered in a mandatory class. Unlike Rule 23(b)(3) class members, objectors to the collectivism of a mandatory
22 The Seventh Amendment provides: "In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved . . . ."
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