*561Justice Marshall

delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III-A.

This case presents the question whether an employee who seeks relief in the form of backpay for a union’s alleged breach of its duty of fair representation has a right to trial by jury. We hold that the Seventh Amendment entitles such a plaintiff to a jury trial.

I

McLean Trucking Company and the Chauffeurs, Teamsters and Helpers Local No. 391 (Union) were parties to a collective-bargaining agreement that governed the terms and conditions of employment at McLean’s terminals. The 27 respondents were employed by McLean as truckdrivers in bargaining units covered by the agreement, and all were members of the Union. In 1982 McLean implemented a change in operations that resulted in the elimination of some of its terminals and the reorganization of others. As part of that change, McLean transferred respondents to the terminal located in Winston-Salem and agreed to give them special seniority rights in relation to “inactive” employees in Winston-Salem who had been laid off temporarily.

After working in Winston-Salem for approximately six weeks, respondents were alternately laid off and recalled several times. Respondents filed a grievance with the Union, contesting the order of the layoffs and recalls. Respondents also challenged McLean’s policy of stripping any driver who was laid off of his special seniority rights. Respondents claimed that McLean breached the collective-bargaining agreement by giving inactive drivers preference over respondents. After these proceedings, the grievance committee ordered McLean to recall any respondent who was then laid off and to lay off any inactive driver who had been recalled; in addition, the committee ordered McLean to recognize respondents’ special seniority rights until the inactive employees were properly recalled.

*562On the basis of this decision, McLean recalled respondents and laid off the drivers who had been on the inactive list when respondents transferred to Winston-Salem. Soon after this, though, McLean recalled the inactive employees, thereby allowing them to regain seniority rights over respondents. In the next round of layoffs, then, respondents had lower priority than inactive drivers and were laid off first. Accordingly, respondents filed another grievance, alleging that McLean’s actions were designed to circumvent the initial decision of the grievance committee.' The Union representative appeared before the grievance committee and presented the contentions of respondents and those of the inactive truckdrivers. At the conclusion of the hearing, the committee held that McLean had not violated the committee’s first decision.

McLean continued to engage in periodic layoffs and recalls of the workers at the Winston-Salem terminal. Respondents filed a third grievance with the Union, but the Union declined to refer the charges to a grievance committee on the ground that the relevant issues had been determined in the prior proceedings.

In July 1983, respondents filed an action in District Court, alleging that McLean had breached the collective-bargaining agreement in violation of § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. §185 (1982 ed.),1 and that the Union had violated its duty of fair representation. Respondents requested a permanent injunction requiring the defendants to cease their illegal acts and to rein*563state them to their proper seniority status; in addition, they sought, inter alia, compensatory damages for lost wages and health benefits. In 1986 McLean filed for bankruptcy; subsequently, the action against it was voluntarily dismissed, along with all claims for injunctive relief.

Respondents had requested a jury trial in their pleadings. The Union moved to strike the jury demand on the ground that no right to a jury trial exists in a duty of fair representation suit. The District Court denied the motion to strike. After an interlocutory appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the trial court, holding that the Seventh Amendment entitled respondents to a jury trial of their claim for monetary relief. 863 F. 2d 334 (1988). We granted the petition for certiorari to resolve a Circuit conflict on this issue,2 491 U. S. 903 (1989), and now affirm the judgment of the Fourth Circuit.

II

The duty of fair representation is inferred from unions’ exclusive authority under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 49 Stat. 449, 29 U. S. C. § 159(a) (1982 ed.), to represent all employees in a bargaining unit. Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171, 177 (1967). The duty requires a union “to serve the interests of all members without hostility or discrimination toward any, to exercise its discretion with complete good faith and honesty, and to avoid arbitrary conduct.” Ibid. A union must discharge its duty both in bargaining with the employer and in its enforcement of the resulting collective-bargaining agreement. Ibid. Thus, the Union here was required to pursue respondents’ grievances in a manner consistent with the principles of fair representation.

*564Because most collective-bargaining agreements accord finality to grievance or arbitration procedures established by the collective-bargaining agreement, an employee normally cannot bring a § 301 action against an employer unless he can show that the union breached its duty of fair representation in its handling of his grievance. DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U. S. 151, 163-164 (1983). Whether the employee sues both the labor union and the employer or only one of those entities, he must prove the same two facts to recover money damages: that the employer’s action violated the terms of the collective-bargaining agreement and that the union breached its duty of fair representation. Id., at 164-165.

Ill

We turn now to the constitutional issue presented in this case — whether respondents are entitled to a jury trial.3 The Seventh Amendment provides that “[i]n Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” The right to a jury trial includes more than the common-law forms of action recognized in 1791; the phrase “Suits at common law” refers to “suits in which legal rights [are] to be ascertained and determined, in contradistinction to those where equitable rights alone [are] recognized, and equitable remedies [are] administered.” Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 447 (1830); see also ibid. (“[T]he amendment then may well be construed to embrace all suits which are not of equity and admiralty jurisdiction, whatever may be the peculiar form which they may assume to settle legal rights”). The right extends to *565causes of action created by Congress. Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412, 417 (1987). Since the merger of the systems of law and equity, see Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 2, this Court has carefully preserved the right to trial by jury where legal rights are at stake. As the Court noted in Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U. S. 500, 501 (1959), ‘“Maintenance of the jury as a fact-finding body is of such importance and occupies so firm a place in our history and jurisprudence that any seeming curtailment of the right to a jury trial should be scrutinized with the utmost care’” (quoting Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U. S. 474, 486 (1935)).

To determine whether a particular action will resolve legal rights, we examine both the nature of the issues involved and the remedy sought. “First, we compare the statutory action to 18th-century actions brought in the courts of England prior to the merger of the courts of law and equity. Second, we examine the remedy sought and determine whether it is legal or equitable in nature.” Tull, supra, at 417-418 (citations omitted). The second inquiry is the more important in our analysis. Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33, 42 (1989).4

A

An action for breach of a union’s duty of fair representation was unknown in 18th-century England; in fact, collective bar*566gaining was unlawful. See N. Citrine, Trade Union Law 4-7 (2d ed. 1960). We must therefore look for an analogous cause of action that existed in the 18th century to determine whether the nature of this duty of fair representation suit is legal or equitable.

The Union contends that this duty of fair representation action resembles a suit brought to vacate an arbitration award because respondents seek to set aside the result of the grievance process. In the 18th century, an action to set aside an arbitration award was considered equitable. 2 J. Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence § 1452, pp. 789-790 (13th ed. 1886) (equity courts had jurisdiction over claims that an award should be set aside on the ground of “mistake of the arbitrators”); see, e. g., Burchell v. Marsh, 17 How. 344 (1855) (reviewing bill in equity to vacate an arbitration award). In support of its characterization of the duty of fair representation claim, the Union cites United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U. S. 56 (1981), in which we held that, for purposes of selecting from various state statutes an appropriate limitations period for a §301 suit against an employer, such a suit was more analogous to a suit to vacate an arbitration award than to a breach of contract action. Id., at 62.5

The arbitration analogy is inapposite, however, to the Seventh Amendment question posed in this case. No grievance committee has considered respondents’ claim that the Union violated its duty of fair representation; the grievance process was concerned only with the employer’s alleged breach of the collective-bargaining agreement. Thus, respondents’ claim against the Union cannot be characterized as an action to va*567cate an arbitration award because “‘[t]he arbitration proceeding did not, and indeed, could not, resolve the employee’s claim against the union. . . . Because no arbitrator has decided the primary issue presented by this claim, no arbitration award need be undone, even if the employee ultimately prevails.’” DelCostello, 462 U. S., at 167 (quoting Mitchell, supra, at 73 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (footnotes omitted)).

The Union next argues that respondents’ duty of fair representation action is comparable to an action by a trust beneficiary against a trustee for breach of fiduciary duty. Such actions were within the exclusive jurisdiction of courts of equity. 2 Story, supra, § 960, p. 266; Restatement (Second) of Trusts § 199(c) (1959). This analogy is far more persuasive than the arbitration analogy. Just as a trustee must act in the best interests of the beneficiaries, 2A W. Fratcher, Scott on Trusts § 170 (4th ed. 1987), a union, as the exclusive representative of the workers, must exercise its power to act on behalf of the employees in good faith, Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S., at 177. Moreover, just as a beneficiary does not directly control the actions of a trustee, 3 Fratcher, supra, § 187, an individual employee lacks direct control over a union’s actions taken on his behalf, see Cox, The Legal Nature of Collective Bargaining Agreements, 57 Mich. L. Rev. 1, 21 (1958).

The trust analogy extends to a union’s handling of grievances. In most cases, a trustee has the exclusive authority to sue third parties who injure the beneficiaries’ interest in the trust, 4 Fratcher, supra, § 282, pp. 25-29, including any legal claim the trustee holds in trust for the beneficiaries, Restatement (Second) of Trusts, supra, § 82, comment a. The trustee then has the sole responsibility for determining whether to settle, arbitrate, or otherwise dispose of the claim. Restatement (Second) of Trusts, supra, § 192. Similarly, the union typically has broad discretion in its decision whether and how to pursue an employee’s grievance against *568an employer. See, e. g., Vaca v. Sipes, supra, at 185. Just as a trust beneficiary can sue to enforce a contract entered into on his behalf by the trustee only if the trustee “improperly refuses or neglects to bring an action against the third person,” Restatement (Second) of Trusts, supra, §282(2), so an employee can sue his employer for a breach of the collective-bargaining agreement only if he shows that the union breached its duty of fair representation in its handling of the grievance, DelCostello, supra, at 163-164. See Bowen v. United States Postal Service, 459 U. S. 212, 243 (1983) (White, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part).

Respondents contend that their duty of fair representation suit is less like a trust action than an attorney malpractice action, which was historically an action at law, see, e. g., Russell v. Palmer, 2 Wils. K. B. 325, 95 Eng. Rep. 837 (1767). In determining the appropriate statute of limitations for a hybrid § 301/duty of fair representation action, this Court in DelCostello noted in dictum that an attorney malpractice action is “the closest state-law analogy for the claim against the union.” 462 U. S., at 167. The Court in DelCostello did not consider the trust analogy, however. Presented with a more complete range of alternatives, we find that, in the context of the Seventh Amendment inquiry, the attorney malpractice analogy does not capture the relationship between the union and the represented employees as fully as the trust analogy does.

The attorney malpractice analogy is inadequate in several respects. Although an attorney malpractice suit is in some ways similar to a suit alleging a union’s breach of its fiduciary duty, the two actions are fundamentally different. The natute of an action is in large part controlled by the nature of the underlying relationship between the parties. Unlike employees represented by a union, a client controls the significant decisions concerning his representation. Moreover, a client can fire his attorney if he is dissatisfied with his attor*569ney’s performance. This option is not available to an individual employee who is unhappy with a union’s representation, unless a majority of the members of the bargaining unit share his dissatisfaction. See J. I. Case Co. v. NLRB, 321 U. S. 332, 338-339 (1944). Thus, we find the malpractice analogy less convincing than the trust analogy.

Nevertheless, the trust analogy does not persuade us to characterize respondents’ claim as wholly equitable. The Union’s argument mischaracterizes the nature of our comparison of the action before us to 18th-century forms of action. As we observed in Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U. S. 531 (1970), “The Seventh Amendment question depends on the nature of the issue to be tried rather than the character of the overall action.” Id., at 538 (emphasis added) (finding a right to jury trial in a shareholder’s derivative suit, a type of suit traditionally brought in courts of equity, because plaintiffs’ case presented legal issues of breach of contract and negligence). As discussed above, see supra, at 564, to recover from the Union here, respondents must prove both that McLean violated §301 by breaching the collective-bargaining agreement and that the Union breached its duty of fair representation.6 When viewed in isolation, the duty of fair representation issue is analogous to a claim against a trustee for breach of fiduciary duty. The § 301 issue, how*570ever, is comparable to a breach of contract claim — a legal issue.7

Respondents’ action against the Union thus encompasses both equitable and legal issues. The first part of our Seventh Amendment inquiry, then, leaves us in equipoise as to whether respondents are entitled to a jury trial.

B

Our determination under the first part of the Seventh Amendment analysis is only preliminary. Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S., at 47. In this case, the only remedy sought is a request for compensatory damages representing backpay and benefits. Generally, an action for money damages was “the traditional form of relief offered in the courts of law.” Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189, 196 (1974). This Court has not, however, held that “any award of monetary relief must necessarily be ‘legal’ relief.” Ibid. (emphasis added). See also Granfinanciera, supra, at 86, n. 9 (White, J., dissenting). Nonetheless, because we conclude that the remedy respondents seek has none of the attributes that must be present before we will find an exception to the general rule and characterize damages as equitable, we find that the remedy sought by respondents is legal.

First, we have characterized damages as equitable where they are restitutionary, such as in “action[s] for disgorgement of improper profits,” Tull, 481 U. S., at 424. See also Curtis v. Loether, supra, at 197; Porter v. Warner Holding Co., 328 U. S. 395, 402 (1946). The backpay sought by re*571spondents is not money wrongfully held by the Union, but wages and benefits they would have received from McLean had the Union processed the employees’ grievances properly. Such relief is not restitutionary.

Second, a monetary award “incidental to or intertwined with injunctive relief” may be equitable. Tull, supra, at 424. See, e. g., Mitchell v. Robert DeMario Jewelry, Inc., 361 U. S. 288, 291-292 (1960) (District Court had power, incident to its injunctive powers, to award backpay under the Fair Labor Standards Act; also backpay in that case was restitutionary). Because respondents seek only money damages, this characteristic is clearly absent from the case.8

The Union argues that the backpay relief sought here must nonetheless be considered equitable because this Court has labeled backpay awarded under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. §2000e et seq. (1982 ed.), as equitable. See Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 415-418 (1975) (characterizing backpay awarded against em*572ployer under Title VII as equitable in context of assessing whether judge erred in refusing to award such relief). It contends that the Title VII analogy is compelling in the context of the duty of fair representation because the Title VII backpay provision was based on the NLRA provision governing backpay awards for unfair labor practices, 29 U. S. C. § 160(c) (1982 ed.) (“[W]here an order directs reinstatement of an employee, back pay may be required of the employer or labor organization”). See Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, supra, at 419. We are not convinced.

The Court has never held that a plaintiff seeking backpay under Title VII has a right to a jury trial. See Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575, 581-582 (1978). Assuming, without deciding, that such a Title VII plaintiff has no right to a jury trial, the Union’s argument does not persuade us that respondents are not entitled to a jury trial here. Congress specifically characterized backpay under Title VII as a form of “equitable relief.” 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(g) (1982 ed.) (“[T]he court may . . . order such affirmative action as may be appropriate, which may include, but is not limited to, reinstatement or hiring of employees, with or without back pay ... , or any other equitable relief as the court deems appropriate”). See also Curtis v. Loether, supra, at 196-197 (distinguishing backpay under Title VII from damages under Title VIII, the fair housing provision of the Civil Right Act, 42 U. S. C. §§3601-3619 (1982 ed.), which the Court characterized as “legal” for Seventh Amendment purposes). Congress made no similar pronouncement regarding the duty of fair representation. Furthermore, the Court has noted that backpay sought from an employer under Title VII would generally be restitutionary in nature, see Curtis v. Loether, supra, at 197, in contrast to the damages sought here from the Union. Thus, the remedy sought in this duty of fair representation case is clearly different from backpay sought for violations of Title VII.

*573Moreover, the fact that Title VII’s backpay provision may have been modeled on a provision in the NLRA concerning remedies for unfair labor practices does not require that the backpay remedy available here be considered equitable. The Union apparently reasons that if Title VII is comparable to one labor law remedy it is comparable to all remedies available in the NLRA context. Although both the duty of fair representation and the unfair labor practice provisions of the NLRA are components of national labor policy, their purposes are not identical. Unlike the unfair labor practice provisions of the NLRA, which are concerned primarily with the public interest in effecting federal labor policy, the duty of fair representation targets “‘the wrong done the individual employee.’” Electrical Workers v. Foust, 442 U. S. 42, 49, n. 12 (1979) (quoting Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S., at 182, n. 8) (emphasis deleted). Thus, the remedies appropriate for unfair labor practices may differ from the remedies for a breach of the duty of fair representation, given the need to vindicate different goals. Certainly, the connection between backpay under Title VII and damages under the unfair labor practice provision of the NLRA does not require us to find a parallel connection between Title VII backpay and money damages for breach of the duty of fair representation.

We hold, then, that the remedy of backpay sought in this duty of fair representation action is legal in nature. Considering both parts of the Seventh Amendment inquiry, we find that respondents are entitled to a jury trial on all issues presented in their suit.

IV

On balance, our analysis of the nature of respondents’ duty of fair representation action and the remedy they seek convinces us that this action is a legal one. Although the search for an adequate 18th-century analog revealed that the claim includes both legal and equitable issues, the money damages respondents seek are the type of relief traditionally awarded by courts of law. Thus, the Seventh Amendment entitles re*574spondents to a jury trial, and we therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

It is so ordered.

Justice Brennan,

concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

I agree with the Court that respondents seek a remedy that is legal in nature and that the Seventh Amendment entitles respondents to a jury trial on their duty of fair representation claims. I therefore join Parts I, II, III — B, and IV of the Court’s opinion. I do not join that part of the opinion which reprises the particular historical analysis this Court has employed to determine whether a claim is a “Sui[t] at common law” under the Seventh Amendment, ante, at 564, because I believe the historical test can and should be simplified.

The current test, first expounded in Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189, 194 (1974), requires a court to compare the right at issue to 18th-century English forms of action to determine whether the historically analogous right was vindicated in an action at law or in equity, and to examine whether the remedy sought is legal or equitable in nature. However, this Court, in expounding the test, has repeatedly discounted the significance of the analogous form of action for deciding where the Seventh Amendment applies. I think it is time we dispense with it altogether.1 I would decide Seventh Amendment questions on the basis of the relief sought. If the relief is legal in nature, i. e., if it is the kind of relief that historically was available from courts of law, I would hold that the parties have a constitutional right to a trial by jury— unless Congress has permissibly delegated the particular dispute to a non-Article III decisionmaker and jury trials would *575frustrate Congress’ purposes in enacting a particular statutory scheme.2

1 believe that our insistence that the jury trial right hinges in part on a comparison of the substantive right at issue to forms of action used in English courts 200 years ago needlessly convolutes our Seventh Amendment jurisprudence. For the past decade and a half, this Court has explained that the two parts of the historical test are not equal in weight, that the nature of the remedy is more important than the nature of the right. See ante, at 565; Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33, 42 (1989); Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412, 421 (1987); Curtis v. Loether, supra, at 196. Since the existence of a right to jury trial therefore turns on the nature of the remedy, absent congressional delegation to a specialized decisionmaker,3 there remains little purpose to our rattling through dusty attics of ancient writs. The time has come to borrow William of Occam’s razor and sever this portion of our analysis.

*576We have long acknowledged that, of the factors relevant to the jury trial right, comparison of the claim to ancient forms of action, “requiring extensive and possibly abstruse historical inquiry, is obviously the most difficult to apply.” Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U. S. 531, 538, n. 10 (1970). Requiring judges, with neither the training nor time necessary for reputable historical scholarship, to root through the tangle of primary and secondary sources to determine which of a hundred or so writs is analogous to the right at issue has embroiled courts in recondite controversies better left to legal historians. For example, in Granfinanciera, S. A., supra, decided last Term, both Justice White, in dissent, and I, writing for the Court, struggled with the question whether an equity court would have heard the suit that was comparable to the modern statutory action at issue. I quoted Professor Garrard Glenn. Id., at 44. Justice White countered that “[o]ther scholars have , looked at the same history and come to a different conclusion. Still others have questioned the soundness of the distinction that Professor Glenn drew .... Trying to read the ambiguous history concerning fraudulent conveyance actions in equity . . . has perplexed jurists in each era, who have come to conflicting decisions each time that the question has found relevance.” Id., at 85 (footnote omitted). I countered with an item-by-item evaluation of Justice White’s sources. See id., at 47, n. 6.4

*577To be sure, it is neither unusual nor embarrassing for members of a court to disagree and disagree vehemently. But it better behooves judges to disagree within the province of judicial expertise. Furthermore, inquiries into the appropriate historical analogs for the rights at issue are not necessarily susceptible of sound resolution under the best of circumstances. As one scholar observes: “[T]he line between law and equity (and therefore between jury and non-jury trial) was not a fixed and static one. There was a continual process of borrowing by one jurisdiction from the other; there were less frequent instances of a sloughing off of older functions. . . . The borrowing by each jurisdiction from the other was not accompanied by an equivalent sloughing off of functions. This led to a very large overlap between law and equity.” James, Right to a Jury Trial in Civil Actions, 72 Yale L. J. 655, 658-659 (1963).

In addition, modern statutory rights did not exist in the 18th century, and even the most exacting historical research may not elicit a clear historical analog.5 The right at issue here, for example, is a creature of modern labor law quite foreign to Georgian England. See ante, at 565-566. Justice Stewart recognized the perplexities involved in this task in his dissent in Ross v. Bernhard, supra, at 550, albeit drawing a different conclusion. “The fact is,” he said, “that there are, for the most part, no such things as inherently ‘legal issues’ or inherently ‘equitable issues.’ There are only factual issues, and, ‘like chameleons [they] take their color from surrounding circumstances.’ Thus, the Court’s ‘nature of the *578issue’ approach is hardly meaningful.”6 I have grappled with this kind of inquiry for three decades on this Court and have come to the realization that engaging in such inquiries is impracticable and unilluminating.

To rest the historical test required by the Seventh Amendment solely on the nature of the relief sought would not, of course, offer the federal courts a rule that is in all cases self-executing. Courts will still be required to ask which remedies were traditionally available at law and which only in equity. But this inquiry involves fewer variables and simpler choices, on the whole, and is far more manageable than the scholasticist debates in which we have been engaged. Moreover, the rule I propose would remain true to the Seventh Amendment, as it is undisputed that, historically, “[j]urisdictional lines [between law and equity] were primarily a matter of remedy.” McCoid, Procedural Reform and the Right to Jury Trial: A Study of Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 116 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1 (1967). See also Redish, Seventh Amendment Right to Jury Trial: A Study in the Irrationality of Rational Decision Making, 70 Nw. U. L. Rev. 486, 490 (1975) (“In the majority of cases at common law, the equitable or legal nature of a suit was determined not by the substantive nature of the cause of action but by the remedy sought”).7

*579This is not to say that the resulting division between claims entitled to jury trials and claims not so entitled would exactly mirror the division between law and equity in England in 1791. But it is toa late in the day for this Court to profess that the Seventh Amendment preserves the right to jury trial only in cases that would have been heard in the British law courts of the 18th century. See, e. g., Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S., at 193 (“Although the thrust of the Amendment was to preserve the right to jury trial as it existed in 1791, it has long been settled that the right extends beyond the common-law forms of action recognized at that time”); Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U. S. 500 (1959) (rejecting the relevance of the chancellor’s historic ability to decide legal claims incidental to a case brought in equity and holding that, in mixed cases, the parties are not only entitled to a jury trial on the legal claims but that this jury trial must precede a decision on the equitable claims — with the attendant collateral-estoppel effects); Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U. S. 531 (1970) (requiring a jury trial on the legal issues in a share*580holders’ derivative suit even though the proeedurally equivalent suit in the 18th century would have been heard only in equity).

Indeed, given this Court’s repeated insistence that the nature of the remedy is always to be given more weight than the nature of the historically analogous right, it is unlikely that the simplified Seventh Amendment analysis I propose will result in different decisions than the analysis in current use. In the unusual circumstance that the nature of the remedy could be characterized equally as legal or equitable, I submit that the comparison of a contemporary statutory action unheard of in the 18th century to some ill-fitting ancient writ is too shaky a basis for the resolution of an issue as significant as the availability of a trial by jury. If, in the rare case, a tie breaker is needed, let us break the tie in favor of jury trial.8

What Blackstone described as “the glory of the English law” and “the most transcendent privilege which any subject can enjoy,” 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *379, was crucial in the eyes of those who founded this country. The encroachment on civil jury trial by colonial administrators was a “deeply divisive issue in the years just preceding the outbreak of hostilities between the colonies and England,” and all 13 States reinstituted the right after hostilities ensued. Wolfram, The Constitutional History of the Seventh Amendment, 57 Minn. L. Rev. 639, 654-655 (1973). “In fact, ‘[t]he right to trial by jury was probably the only one universally secured by the first American constitutions.’” Id., at 655 (quoting L. Levy, Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History — Legacy of Suppression 281 (1963 reprint)). Fear of a Federal Government that had not guaran*581teed jury trial in civil cases, voiced first at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 and regularly during the ratification debates, was the concern that precipitated the maelstrom over the need for a bill of rights in the United States Constitution. Wolfram, supra, at 657-660.

This Court has long recognized the caliber of this right. In Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 446 (1830), Justice Story stressed: “The trial by jury is justly dear to the American people. It has always been an object of deep interest and solicitude, and every encroachment upon it has been watched with great jealousy.” Similarly, in Jacob v. New York City, 315 U. S. 752, 752-753 (1942), we said that “[t]he right of jury trial in civil cases at common law is a basic and fundamental feature of our system of federal jurisprudence ... [a] right so fundamental and sacred to the citizen [that it] should be jealously guarded by the courts.”

We can guard this right and save our courts from needless and intractable excursions into increasingly unfamiliar territory simply by retiring that prong of our Seventh Amendment test which we have already cast into a certain doubt. If we are not prepared to accord the nature of the historical analog sufficient weight for this factor to affect the outcome of our inquiry, except in the rarest of hypothetical cases, what reason do we have for insisting that federal judges proceed with this arduous inquiry? It is time we read the writing on the wall, especially as we ourselves put it there.

Justice Stevens,

concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

Because I believe the Court has made this case unnecessarily difficult by exaggerating the importance of finding a precise common-law analogue to the duty of fair representation, I do not join Part III-A of its opinion. Ironically, by stressing the importance of identifying an exact analogue, the Court has diminished the utility of looking for any analogue.

*582As I have suggested in the past, I believe the duty of fair representation action resembles a common-law action against an attorney for malpractice more closely than it does any other form of action. See United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U. S. 56, 74 (1981) (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). Of course, this action is not an exact counterpart to a malpractice suit. Indeed, by definition, no recently recognized form of action — whether the product of express congressional enactment or of judicial interpretation — can have a precise analog in 17th- or 18th-century English law. Were it otherwise the form of action would not in fact be “recently recognized.”

But the Court surely overstates this action’s similarity to an action against a trustee. Collective bargaining involves no settlor, no trust corpus, and no trust instrument executed to convey property to beneficiaries chosen at the settlor’s pleasure. Nor are these distinctions reified matters of pure form. The law of trusts originated to expand the varieties of land ownership in feudal England, and evolved to protect the paternalistic beneficence of the wealthy, often between generations and always over time. See 1 W. Fratcher, Scott on Trusts § 1 (4th ed. 1987); L. Friedman, A History of American Law 212, 222-223 (1973). Beneficiaries are protected from their own judgment.1 The attorney-client relationship, by contrast, advances the client’s interests in dealings with adverse parties. Clients are saved from their lack of skill, but their judgment is honored. Union members, as a group, accordingly have the power to hire, fire, and direct the actions of their representatives — prerogatives anathema to the paternalistic forms of the equitable trust.2

*583Equitable reasoning calibrated by the sophisticated judgment of the jurist, the accountant, and the chancellor is thus appropriately invoked when the impact of a trustee’s conduct on the future interests of contingent remaindermen must be reviewed. Howevér, the commonsense understanding of the jury, selected to represent the community, is appropriately invoked when disputes in the factory, the warehouse, and the garage must be resolved. In most duty of fair representation cases, the issues, which require an understanding of the realities of employment relationships, are typical grist for the jury’s judgment. Indeed, the law defining the union’s duty of fair representation has developed in cases tried to juries. Thus, Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171 (1967), was itself a jury trial as were, for example, Electrical Workers v. Foust, 442 U. S. 42 (1979), and Bowen v. United States Postal Service, 459 U. S. 212 (1983).

As the Court correctly observed in Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189, 195 (1974), “in an ordinary civil action in the district courts, where there is obviously no functional justification for denying the jury trial right, a jury trial must be available if the action involves rights and remedies of the sort typically enforced in an action at law.” As I had occasion to remark at an earlier proceeding in the same case, the relevant historical question is not whether a suit was “specifically recognized at common law,” but whether “the nature of the substantive right asserted ... is analogous to common law rights” and whether the relief sought is “typical of an action at law.” Rogers v. Loether, 467 F. 2d 1110, 1116-1117 (CA7 1972). Duty of fair representation suits are for the most part ordinary civil actions involving the stuff of contract and malpractice disputes. There is accordingly no ground for excluding these actions from the jury right.

In my view, the evolution of this doctrine through suits tried to juries, the useful analogy to common-law malpractice *584cases, and the well-recognized duty to scrutinize any proposed curtailment of the right to a jury trial “with the utmost care,” ante, at 565, provide a plainly sufficient basis for the Court’s holding today. I therefore join its judgment and all of its opinion except for Part III-A.

Justice Kennedy,

with whom Justice O’Connor and Justice Scalia join, dissenting.

This case asks whether the Seventh Amendment guarantees the respondent union members a jury trial in a duty of fair representation action against their labor union. The Court is quite correct, in my view, in its formulation of the initial premises that must govern the case. Under Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189, 194 (1974), the right to a jury trial in a statutory action depends on the presence of “legal rights and remedies.” To determine whether rights and remedies in a duty of fair representation action are legal in character, we must compare the action to the 18th-century cases permitted in the law courts of England, and we must examine the nature of the relief sought. See Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33, 42 (1989). I agree also with those Members of the Court who find that the duty of fair representation action resembles an equitable trust action more than a suit for malpractice. See ante, at 568-569.

I disagree with the analytic innovation of the Court that identification of the trust action as a model for modern duty of fair representation actions is insufficient to decide the case. The Seventh Amendment requires us to determine whether the duty of fair representation action “is more similar to cases that were tried in courts of law than to suits tried in courts of equity.” Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412, 417 (1987). Having inade this decision in favor of an equitable action, our inquiry should end. Because the Court disagrees with this proposition, I dissent.

*585I

Both the Union and the respondents identify historical actions to which they find the duty of fair representation action most analogous. The Union contends that the action resembles a traditional equitable suit by a beneficiary against a trustee for failing to pursue a claim that he holds in trust. See, e. g., Caffrey v. Darby, 6 Ves. Jun. 489, 495-496, 31 Eng. Rep. 1159, 1162 (Ch. 1801); Restatement (Second) of Trusts § 205(a), and Illustration 2, pp. 458, 459 (1957) (Restatement). In other words, the Union compares itself to a trustee that, in its discretion,, has decided not to press certain claims. The respondents argue that the duty of fair representation action resembles a traditional legal malpractice suit by a client against his lawyer for mishandling a claim. See, e. g., Pitt v. Yalden, 4 Burr. 2060, 98 Eng. Rep. 74 (K. B. 1767); Russell v. Palmer, 2 Wils. K. B. 325, 95 Eng. Rep. 837 (1767). They contend that the Union, when acting as their legal representative, had a duty to press their grievances.

Justice Marshall, speaking for four Members of the Court, states an important and correct reason for finding the trust model better than the malpractice analogy. He observes that the client of an attorney, unlike a union member or beneficiary, controls the significant decisions concerning his litigation and can fire the attorney if not satisfied. See ante, at 568-569. Put another way, although a lawyer acts as an agent of his client, unions and trustees do not serve as agents of their members and beneficiaries in the conventional sense of being subject to their direction and control in pursuing claims. An individual union member cannot require his union to pursue a claim and cannot choose a different representative. See 29 U. S. C. § 159(a) (1982 ed.) (making the union elected by the employees in a bargaining unit the exclusive representative); Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171, 177 (1967) (allowing a union to exercise discretion in fulfilling its duty of fair representation). A trustee, likewise, may exercise *586proper discretion in deciding whether to press claims held in trust, see Blue v. Marshall, 3 P. Wms. 381, 383-384, 24 Eng. Rep. 1110, 1111 (Ch. 1735); Restatement, supra, §192, and in general does not act as an agent of his beneficiaries, see Taylor v. Davis, 110 U. S. 330, 334-335 (1884) (“A trustee is not an agent. An agent represents and acts for his principal .... [A trustee] has no principal”); 1 A. Scott, Law of Trusts §8, pp. 74-79 (3d ed. 1967) (distinguishing trustees from agents).

Further considerations fortify the conclusion that the trust analogy is the controlling one here. A union’s duty of fair representation accords with a trustee’s duty of impartiality. The duty of fair representation requires a union “to make an honest effort to serve the interests of all of [its] members, without hostility to any.” Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U. S. 330, 337 (1953). This standard may require a union to act for the benefit of employees who, as in this case, have antithetical interests. See Cox, The Legal Nature of Collective Bargaining Agreements, 57 Mich. L. Rev. 1, 21 (1958). Trust law, in a similar manner, long has required trustees to serve the interests of all beneficiaries with impartiality. See Stuart v. Stuart, 3 Beav. 430, 431, 49 Eng. Rep. 169, 169-170 (1841); Restatement, supra, § 183 (“When there are two or more beneficiaries of a trust, the trustee is under a duty to deal impartially with them”); 2 Scott, supra, § 183, pp. 1471-1472, and n. 2.

A lawyer’s duty of loyalty is cast in different terms. Although the union is charged with the responsibility of reconciling the positions of its members, the lawyer’s duty of loyalty long has precluded the representation of conflicting interests. See Williams v. Reed, 29 F. Cas. 1386, 1390 (No. 17,733) (CC Me. 1824) (Story, J.); H. Drinker, Legal Ethics 103 (1953) (describing the ancient history of the prohibition on simultaneous representation). A lawyer, at least absent knowing waiver by the parties, could not represent both the respondents and the senior laidoff workers as the *587Union has done in this case. Cf. ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct 1.7(b) (1984); ABA Model Code of Professional Responsibility DR 5-105(C) (1980).

The relief available in a duty of fair representation action also makes the trust action the better model. To remedy a breach of the duty of fair representation, a court must issue an award “fashioned to make the injured employee whole.” Electrical Workers v. Foust, 442 U. S. 42, 49 (1979); see Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 323 U. S. 192, 206-207 (1944); Vaca v. Sipes, supra, at 187. The court may order an injunction compelling the union, if it is still able, to pursue the employee’s claim, and may require monetary compensation, but it cannot award exemplary or punitive damages. See Foust, supra, at 52. This relief parallels the remedies prevailing in the courts of equity in actions against trustees for failing to pursue claims. See, e. g., Caffrey v. Darby, supra, at 497, 31 Eng. Rep., at 1163 (ordering the trustee to make a beneficiary whole for failing to make a timely claims); see also Restatement, supra, § 205, and Comment a; G. Bogert & G. Bogert, Law of Trusts and Trustees § 862, p. 40, n. 10 (rev. 2d ed. 1982).

These remedies differ somewhat from those available in attorney malpractice actions. Because legal malpractice was a common-law claim, clients sued their attorneys for breach of professional obligations in the law courts. See R. Mallen & V. Levit, Legal Malpractice §§4 and 5, pp. 14-18 (2d ed. 1981). No one maintains that clients could obtain from these courts the injunctive relief offered in duty of fair representation actions. The evidence suggests that compensatory damages in malpractice cases resembled the monetary relief now awarded in duty of fair representation actions. See, e. g., Pitt v. Yalden, supra, at 2062, 98 Eng. Rep., at 75-76 (opinion of Yates, J.) (discussing the measure of damages). Yet, as a historical matter, juries did have the authority to award exemplary damages in at least some tort actions. See Browning-Ferris Industries v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 *588U. S. 257, 274, and n. 20 (1989); Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S., at 196. Although the parties have not cited any punitive damages award in an attorney malpractice action prior to 1791, courts have awarded such damages since the 19th century. See Mallen & Levit, supra, § 315, pp. 365-367; Wade, The Attorney’s Liability for Negligence, 12 Vand. L. Rev. 755, 772 (1959).

For all these reasons, the suit here resembles a trust action, not a legal malpractice action. By this I do not imply that a union acts as a trustee in all instances or that trust law, as a general matter, should inform any particular aspects of federal labor law. Obvious differences between a union and a trustee will exist in other contexts. I would conclude only that, under the analysis directed by our precedents, the respondents may not insist on a jury trial. When all rights and remedies are considered, their action resembles a suit heard by the courts of equity more than a case heard by the courts of law. See Tull, 481 U. S., at 417. From this alone it follows that the respondents have no jury trial right on their duty of fair representation claims against the Union.

II

The Court relies on two lines of precedents to overcome the conclusion that the trust action should serve as the controlling model. The first consists of cases in which the Court has considered simplifications in litigation resulting from modern procedural reforms in the federal courts. Justice Marshall asserts that these cases show that the Court must look at the character of individual issues rather than claims as a whole. See ante, at 569. The second line addresses the significance of the remedy in determining the equitable or legal nature of an action for the purpose of choosing the most appropriate analogy. Under these cases, the Court decides that the respondents have a right to a jury because they seek money damages. See ante, at 570-573. These authorities do not support the Court’s holding.

*589A

In three cases we have found a right to trial by jury where there are legal claims that, for procedural reasons, a plaintiff could have or must have raised in the courts of equity before the systems merged. In Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U. S. 500 (1959), Fox, a potential defendant threatened with legal antitrust claims, brought an action for declaratory and injunctive relief against Beacon, the likely plaintiff. Because only the courts of equity had offered such relief prior to the merger of the two court systems, Fox had thought that it could deprive Beacon of a jury trial. Beacon, however, raised the antitrust issues as counterclaims and sought a jury. We ruled that, because Beacon would have had a right to a jury trial on its antitrust claims, Fox could not deprive it of a jury merely by taking advantage of modern declaratory procedures to sue first. The result was consistent with the spirit of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which allow liberal joinder of legal and equitable actions, and the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U. S. C. §§2201, 2202 (1982 ed.), which preserves the right to jury trial to both parties. See 359 U. S., at 509-510.

In Dairy Queen, Inc. v. Wood, 369 U. S. 469 (1962), we held, in a similar manner, that a plaintiff, by asking in his complaint for an equitable accounting for trademark infringement, could not deprive the defendant of a jury trial on contract claims subsumed within the accounting. Although a court of equity would have heard the contract claims as part of the accounting suit, we found them severable under modern procedure. See id., at 477-479.

In Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U. S. 531 (1970), a shareholder-plaintiff demanded a jury trial in a derivative action asserting a legal claim on behalf of his corporation. The defendant opposed a jury trial. In deciding the case, we recognized that only the courts of equity had procedural devices allowing shareholders to raise a corporation’s claims. We nonetheless *590again ruled that modern procedure allowed trial of the legal claim to a jury. See id., at 542.

These three cases responded to the difficulties created by a merged court system. See McCoid, Procedural Reform and the Right to Jury Trial: A Study of Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 116 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1 (1967). They stand for the proposition that, because distinct courts of equity no longer exist, the possibility or necessity of using former equitable procedures to press a legal claim no longer will determine the right to a jury. Justice Marshall reads these cases to require a jury trial whenever a cause of action contains legal issues and would require a jury trial in this case because the respondents must prove a breach of the collective-bargaining agreement as one element of their claim. See ante, at 569-570.

I disagree. The respondents, as shown above, are asserting an equitable claim. Having reached this conclusion, the Beacon, Dairy Queen, and Ross cases are inapplicable. Although we have divided self-standing legal claims from equitable declaratory, accounting, and derivative procedures, we have never parsed legal elements out of equitable claims absent specific procedural justifications. Actions which, beyond all question, are equitable in nature may involve some predicate inquiry that would be submitted to a jury in other contexts. For example, just as the plaintiff in a duty of fair representation action against his union must show breach of the collective-bargaining agreement as an initial matter, in an action against a trustee for failing to pursue a claim the beneficiary must show that the claim had some merit. See 3 A. Scott, Law of Trusts § 192, pp. 1589-1590, and n. 6 (3d ed. 1967). But the question of the claim’s validity, even if the claim raises contract issues, would not bring the jury right into play in a suit against a trustee.

Our own writing confirms the consistency of this view with respect to the action before us. We have not deemed the elements of a duty of fair representation action to be independent of each other. Proving breach of the collective-*591bargaining agreement is but a preliminary and indispensable step to obtaining relief in a duty of fair representation action. We have characterized the breach-of-contract and duty issues as “inextricably interdependent” and have said that “[t]o prevail against either the company or the Union, . . . [employee-plaintiffs] must not only show that their discharge was contrary to the contract but must also carry the burden of demonstrating breach of duty by the Union.” DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U. S. 151, 164-165 (1983) (internal quotation marks omitted). The absence of distinct equitable courts provides no procedural reason for wresting one of these elements from the other.

B

The Court also rules that, despite the appropriateness of the trust analogy as a whole, the respondents have a right to a jury trial because they seek money damages. See ante, at 570-573. The nature of the remedy remains a factor of considerable importance in determining whether a statutory action had a legal or equitable analog in 1791, but we have not adopted a rule that a statutory action permitting damages is by definition more analogous to a legal action than to any equitable suit. In each case, we look to the remedy to determine whether, taken with other factors, it places an action within the definition of “Suits at common law.”

In Curtis, 415 U. S., at 195-196, for example, we ruled that the availability of actual and punitive damages made a statutory antidiscrimination action resemble a legal tort action more than any equitable action. We made explicit that we did not “go so far as to say that any award of monetary relief must necessarily be ‘legal’ relief.” Id., at 196. Although monetary damages might cause some statutory actions to resemble tort suits, the presence of monetary damages in this duty of fair representation action does not make it more analogous to a legal action than to an equitable action. Indeed, as shown above, the injunctive and monetary reme*592dies available make the duty of fair representation suit less analogous to a malpractice action than to a suit against a trustee.

In Tull, 481 U. S., at 422, the availability of damages again played a critical role in determining the right to a jury trial. In an environmental suit by the Government for injunctive relief and a civil penalty, both an equitable public nuisance action and a legal action in debt seemed appropriate historical models. We decided between them by noting that only the courts of law could award civil penalties. See id., at 422-425. In the present case, however, one cannot characterize both the trust analogy and the legal malpractice comparisons as appropriate; the considerations discussed above, including the remedy available, all make the trust model superior. As we stated in Tull, “[o]ur search is for a single historical analog, taking into consideration the nature of the cause of action and the remedy as two important factors.” Id., at 422, n. 6. The trust action alone satisfies this standard.

In Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33 (1989), we again found the presence of monetary relief critical in determining the nature of a statutory action as a whole. We held that, despite some evidence that both the courts of law and equity had jurisdiction over fraudulent conveyances, only a court of law could entertain an action to recover an alleged fraudulent transfer of a determinate sum of money. See id., at 43-47. As in Curtis and Tull, however, the particular importance of monetary damages in Granfinanciera does not carry forward into this case. The courts of equity could and did award the kind of damages sought by the respondents here. The respondents’ mere request for backpay in no way entitles them to a jury under the Seventh Amendment.

Ill

The Court must adhere to the historical test in determining the right to a jury because the language of the Constitution *593requires it. The Seventh Amendment “preserves” the right to jury trial in civil cases. We cannot preserve a right existing in 1791 unless we look to history to identify it. Our precedents are in full agreement with this reasoning and insist on adherence to the historical test. No alternatives short of rewriting the Constitution exist. See F. James, Civil Procedure § 8.5, p. 352 (1965) (“For good or evil, both the constitutio[n] and the charters of the merged procedure embody the policy judgment, quite deliberately made, to leave the extent of jury trial about where history had come to place it”); Shapiro & Coquillette, The Fetish of Jury Trial in Civil Cases: A Comment on Rachal v. Hill, 85 Harv. L. Rev. 442, 449 (1971) (“Even the most ardent critic of any historical test would concede that matters that would have fallen entirely within the jurisdiction of a court of equity or admiralty in 1791 do not come within the definition of a suit at ‘common law’ under the seventh amendment”). If we abandon the plain language of the Constitution to expand the jury right, we may expect Courts with opposing views to curtail it in the future.

It is true that a historical inquiry into the distinction between law and equity may require us to enter into a domain becoming less familiar with time. Two centuries have passed since the Seventh Amendment’s ratification, and the incompleteness of our historical records makes it difficult to know the nature of certain actions in 1791. The historical test, nonetheless, has received more criticism than it deserves. Although our application of the analysis in some cases may seem biased in favor of jury trials, the test has not become a nullity. We do not require juries in all statutory actions. See, e. g., Lehman v. Nakshian, 453 U. S. 156, 162, n. 9 (1981) (no jury trial right in suits against the United States); Katchen v. Landy, 382 U. S. 323, 337-340 (1966) (no jury trial right on certain bankruptcy claims); Luria v. United States, 231 U. S. 9, 27-28 (1913) (no jury trial right in action to cancel naturalization). The historical test, in fact, resolves most cases without difficulty. See C. Wright, Law *594of Federal Courts § 92, p. 609 (4th ed. 1983) (“[T]he vast and controversial literature that has developed as to the scope of the jury right is, fortunately, not in proportion to the practical importance of the problem in the actual working of the courts”).

I would hesitate to abandon or curtail the historical test out of concern for the competence of the Court to understand legal history. We do look to history for the answers to constitutional questions. See, e. g., Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 399-415 (1963) (opinion of Brennan, J.); Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 260-302 (1985) (Brennan, J., dissenting). Although opinions will differ on what this history shows, the approach has no less validity in the Seventh Amendment context than elsewhere.

If Congress has not provided for a jury trial, we are confined to the Seventh Amendment to determine whether one is required. Our own views respecting the wisdom of using a jury should be put aside. Like Justice Brennan, I admire the jury process. Other judges have taken the opposite view. See, e. g., J. Frank, Law and the Modern Mind 170-185 (1931). But the judgment of our own times is not always preferable to the lessons of history. Our whole constitutional experience teaches that history must inform the judicial inquiry. Our obligation to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, no less than the compact we have with the generation that wrote them for us, do not permit us to disregard provisions that some may think to be mere matters of historical form.

IV

Because of the employer’s bankruptcy, the respondents are proceeding only against the Union in the suit before us. In a typical duty of fair Tepresentation action, however, union members may sue both their union and their employer. See Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S., at 186. The Union argues that a duty of fair representation action against an employer also would have an equitable character because it resembles an*595other trust action entertained in the courts of equity. It contends that, if a trustee fails to pursue a claim according to his duty, the beneficiary may join the trustee and the third party in one action and assert in his own name both the claim of breach of fiduciary duty and the claim against the third party. See Restatement §282(1), p. 44 (1957); 4 A. Scott, Law of Trusts §282.1, pp. 2338-2340 (3d ed. 1967); Bowen v. United States Postal Service, 459 U. S. 212, 243 (1983) (White, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). In this case, we do not have to determine the correctness of this analogy, nor must we decide whether Beacon, Dairy Queen, or Ross would require a jury trial in a suit against an employer. I would deny a jury trial to the respondents here, but would leave these other questions for a later time. Because the Court has reached a different result, I dissent.

Mr. Justice White

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The issue in these cases is whether, consistent with the Seventh Amendment, Congress may create a new cause of action in the Government for civil penalties enforceable in an administrative agency where there is no jury trial.

I

After extensive investigation, Congress concluded, in 1970, that work-related deaths and injuries had become a “drastic” national problem.1 Finding the existing state statutory rem*445edies as well as state common-law actions for negligence and wrongful death to be inadequate to protect the employee population from death and injury due to unsafe working conditions, Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA or Act), 84 Stat. 1590, 29 U. S. C. § 651 et seq. The Act created a new statutory duty to avoid maintaining unsafe or unhealthy working conditions, and empowers the Secretary of Labor to promulgate health and safety standards.2 Two new remedies were provided—permitting the Federal Government, proceeding before an administrative agency, (1) to obtain abatement orders requiring employers to correct unsafe working conditions and (2) to impose civil penalties on any employer maintaining any unsafe working condition. Each remedy exists whether or not an employee is actually injured or killed as a result of the condition, and existing state statutory and common-law remedies for actual injury and death remain unaffected.

Under the Act, inspectors, representing the Secretary of *446Labor, are authorized to conduct reasonable safety and health inspections. 29 U. S. C. § 657 (a). If a violation is discovered, the inspector, on behalf of the Secretary, issues a citation to the employer fixing a reasonable time for its abatement and, in his discretion, proposing a civil penalty. §§ 658, 659. Such proposed penalties may range from nothing for de minimis and nonserious violations, to not more than $1,000 for serious violations, to a maximum of $10,000 for willful or repeated violations, §§ 658 (a), 659 (a), 666 (a)-(c) and (j).

If the employer wishes to contest the penalty or the abatement order, he may do so by notifying the Secretary of Labor within 15 days, in which event the abatement order is automatically stayed. §§ 659 (a), (b), 666 (d). An evidentiary hearing is then held before an administrative law judge of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. The Commission consists of three members, appointed for six-year terms, each of whom is qualified “by reason of training, education or experience” to adjudicate contested citations and assess penalties. §§ 651 (3), 659 (c), 661, 666 (i). At this hearing the burden is on the Secretary to establish the elements of the alleged violation and the propriety of his proposed abatement order and proposed penalty; and the judge is empowered to affirm, modify, or vacate any or all of these items, giving due consideration in his penalty assessment to “the size of the business of the employer . . . , the gravity of the violation, the good faith of the employer, and the history of previous violations.” § 666 (i). The judge’s decision becomes the Commission’s final and appealable order unless within 30 days a Commissioner directs that it be reviewed by the full Commission.3 §§ 659 (c), 661 (i); see 29 CFR §§ 2200.90, 2200.91 (1976).

If review is granted, the Commission’s subsequent order directing abatement and the payment of any assessed pen*447alty becomes final unless the employer timely petitions for judicial review in the appropriate court of appeals. 29 U. S. C. § 660 (a). The Secretary similarly may seek review of Commission orders, § 660 (b), but, in either case, “[t]he findings of the Commission with respect to questions of fact, if supported by substantial evidence on the record considered as a whole, shall be conclusive.” § 660 (a). If the employer fails to pay the assessed penalty, the Secretary may commence a collection action in a federal district court in which neither the fact of the violation nor the propriety of the penalty assessed may be retried. § 666 (k). Thus, the penalty may be collected without the employer’s ever being entitled to a jury determination of the facts constituting the violation.

II

Petitioners were separately cited by the Secretary and ordered immediately to abate pertinent hazards after inspections of their respective worksites conducted in 1972 revealed conditions that assertedly violated a mandatory occupational safety standard promulgated by the Secretary under § 5 (a) (2) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 654 (a) (2). In each case an employee’s death had resulted. Petitioner Irey was cited for a willful violation of 29 CFR § 1926.652 (b) and Table P-1 (1976)—a safety standard promulgated by the Secretary under the Act requiring the sides of trenches in “unstable or soft material” to be “shored, . . . sloped, or otherwise supported by means of sufficient strength to protect the employees working within them.” The Secretary proposed a penalty of $7,500 for this violation and ordered the hazard abated immediately.

Petitioner Atlas was cited for a serious violation of 29 CFR §§ 1926.500 (b) (1) and (f) (5) (ii) (1976), which require that roof opening covers, be “so installed as to prevent accidental displacement.” The Secretary proposed a penalty of $600 for this violation and ordered the hazard abated immediately.

Petitioners timely contested these citations and were afforded hearings before Administrative Law Judges of the *448Commission. The judges, and later the Commission, affirmed the findings of violations and accompanying abatement requirements and assessed petitioner Irey a reduced civil penalty of $5,000 and petitioner Atlas the civil penalty of $600 which the Secretary had proposed. Petitioners respectively thereupon sought judicial review in the Courts of Appeals for the Third and Fifth Circuits, challenging both the Commission’s factual findings that violations had occurred and the constitutionality of the Act’s enforcement procedures.

A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the Commission’s orders in the Irey case over petitioner’s and a dissenter’s contention that the failure to afford the employer a jury trial on the question whether he had violated OSHA was in violation of the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution which provides for jury trial in most civil suits at common law. 519 F. 2d 1200. On rehearing en banc, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, over four dissents, adhered to the original panel’s decision. Id., at 1215. It concluded that this Court’s rulings to date “leave no doubt that the Seventh Amendment is not applicable, at least in the context of a case such as this one, and that Congress is free to provide an administrative enforcement scheme without the intervention of a jury at any stage.” Id., at 1218.

The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit also affirmed the Commission’s order in the Atlas case over a similar claim that the enforcement scheme violated the Seventh Amendment. 518 F. 2d 990. It stated:

“Where adjudicative responsibility rests only in the administering agency, 'jury trials would be incompatible with the whole concept of administrative adjudication and would substantially interfere with the [agency’s] role in the statutory scheme.’”4 Id., at 1011.

*449We granted the petitions for writs of certiorari limited to the important question whether the Seventh Amendment prevents Congress from assigning to an administrative agency, under these circumstances, the task of adjudicating violations of OSHA.5 424 U. S. 964.

Ill

The Seventh Amendment provides that “[i]n Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved . . . .” The phrase “Suits at common law” has been construed to refer to cases tried prior to the adoption of the Seventh Amendment in courts of law in which jury trial was customary as distinguished from courts of equity or admiralty in which jury trial was not. Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433 (1830). Petitioners claim that a suit in a federal court by the Government for civil penalties for violation of a statute is a suit for a money judgment which is classically a suit at common law, Whitehead v. Shattuck, 138 U. S. 146, 151 (1891); and that the defendant therefore has a Seventh Amendment right to a jury determination of all issues of fact in such a case, see Hepner v. United States, 213 U. S. 103, 115 (1909) (dictum) ; United States v. Regan, 232 U. S. 37, 47 (1914) (dictum).6 *450Petitioners then claim that to permit Congress to assign the function of adjudicating the Government’s rights to civil penalties for violation of the statute to a different forum—an administrative agency in which no jury is available—would be to permit Congress to deprive a defendant of his Seventh Amendment jury right. We disagree. At least in cases in which “public rights” are being litigated—e. g., cases in which the Government sues in its sovereign capacity to enforce public rights created by statutes within the power of Congress to enact—the Seventh Amendment does not prohibit Congress from assigning the factfinding function and initial adjudication to an administrative forum with which the jury would be incompatible.7

Congress has often created new statutory obligations, provided for civil penalties for their violation, and committed exclusively to an administrative agency the function of deciding whether a violation has in fact occurred. These statutory schemes have been sustained by this Court, albeit often without express reference to the Seventh Amendment. Thus taxes may constitutionally be assessed and collected together with penalties, with the relevant facts in some instances being adjudicated only by an administrative agency. Phillips v. Commissioner, 283 U. S. 589, 599-600 (1931); Murray’s *451 Lessee v. Hoboken Land Co., 18 How. 272, 284 (1856).8 Neither of these cases expressly discussed the question whether the taxation scheme violated the Seventh Amendment. However, in Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U. S. 391 (1938), the Court said, in rejecting a claim under the Sixth Amendment that the assessment and adjudication of tax penalties could not be made without a jury, that “the determination of the facts upon which liability is based may be by an administrative agency instead of a jury,” id., at 402. Similarly, Congress has entrusted to an administrative agency the task of adjudicating violations of the customs and immigration laws and assessing penalties based thereon. Lloyd Sabaudo Societa v. Elting, 287 U. S. 329, 335 (1932) (“[D]ue process of law does not require that the courts, rather than administrative officers, be charged . . . with determining the facts upon which the imposition of [fines] depends”); Oceanic Nav. Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U. S. 320 (1909).9 See also Ex parte Bakelite Corp., 279 U. S. 438, 451, 458 (1929).

In Block v. Hirsh, 256 U. S. 135 (1921), the Court sustained Congress’ power to pass a statute, applicable to the District of Columbia, temporarily suspending landlords’ legal remedy of ejectment and relegating them to an administrative fact*452finding forum charged with determining fair rents at which tenants could hold over despite the expiration of their leases. In that case the Court squarely rejected a challenge to the statute based on the Seventh Amendment, stating:

“The statute is objected to on the further ground that landlords and tenants are deprived by it of a trial by jury on the right to possession of the land. If the power of the Commission established by the statute to regulate the relation is established, as we think it is, by what we have said, this objection amounts to little. To regulate the relation and to decide the facts affecting it are hardly separable.” Id., at 158. (Emphasis added.)

In Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22 (1932), apparently referring to the above-cited line of authority, the Court stated:

“[T]he distinction is at once apparent between cases of private right and those which arise between the Government and persons subject to its authority in connection with the performance of the constitutional functions of the executive or legislative departments. . . . [T]he Congress, in exercising the powers confided to it may establish ‘legislative’ courts ... to serve as special tribunals ‘to examine and determine various matters, arising between the government and others, which from their nature do not require judicial determination and yet are susceptible of it.’ But ‘the mode of determining matters of this class is completely within congressional control. Congress may reserve to itself the power to decide, may delegate that power to executive officers, or may commit it to judicial tribunals.’ . . . Familiar illustrations of administrative agencies created for the determination of such matters are found in connection with the exercise of the congressional power as to interstate and foreign commerce, taxation, immigration, the public lands, public health, the facilities of the post office, pensions and payments to veterans.” Id., at 50-51. (Emphasis added.)

*453In NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1 (1937), the Court squarely addressed the Seventh Amendment issue involved when Congress commits the factfinding function under a new statute to an administrative tribunal. Under the National Labor Relations Act, Congress had committed to the National Labor Relations Board, in a proceeding brought by its litigating arm, the task of deciding whether an unfair labor practice had been committed and of ordering backpay where appropriate. The Court stated:

“The instant case is not a suit at common law or in the nature of such a suit. The proceeding is one unknown to the common law. It is a statutory proceeding. Reinstatement of the employee and payment for time lost are requirements [administratively] imposed for violation of the statute and are remedies appropriate to its enforcement. The contention under the Seventh Amendment is without merit.” Id., at 48-49. (Emphasis added.)10

*454This passage from Jones & Laughlin has recently been explained in Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189 (1974), in which the Court held the Seventh Amendment applicable to private damages suits in federal courts brought under the housing discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The Court rejected the argument that Jones & Laughlin held the Seventh Amendment inapplicable to any action based on a statutorily created right even if the action was brought before a tribunal which customarily utilizes a jury as its factfinding arm. Instead, we concluded that Jones & Laughlin upheld

“congressional power to entrust enforcement of statutory rights to an administrative process or specialized court of equity [11] free from the strictures of the Seventh Amendment.” 415 U. S., at 194-195. (Emphasis added.)

Finally, in Pernell v. Southall Realty, 416 U. S. 363 (1974),12 in discussing Block v. Hirsh, 256 U. S. 135 (1921), and Jones & Laughlin, we stated:

“Block v. Hirsh merely stands for the principle that the Seventh Amendment is generally inapplicable in administrative proceedings, where jury trials would be incompatible with the whole concept of administrative adjudication. . . . We may assume that the Seventh Amendment would not be a bar to a congressional effort to *455entrust landlord-tenant disputes, including those over the right to possession, to an administrative agency. Congress has not seen fit to do so, however, but rather has provided that actions under § 16-1501 be brought as ordinary civil actions in the District of Columbia’s court of general jurisdiction. Where it has done so, and where the action involves rights and remedies recognized at common law, it must preserve to parties their right to a jury trial.” 416 U. S., at 383. (Emphasis added.)

In sum, the cases discussed above stand clearly for the proposition that when Congress creates new statutory “public rights,” it may assign their adjudication to an administrative agency with which a jury trial would be incompatible, without violating the Seventh Amendment’s injunction that jury trial is to be “preserved” in “suits at common law.”13 Congress is not required by the Seventh Amendment to choke the already crowded federal courts with new types of litigation or prevented from committing some new types of litigation to administrative agencies with special competence in the relevant field. This is the case even if the Seventh Amendment would have required a jury where the adjudication of those rights is assigned to a federal court of law instead of an administrative agency. Petitioners would nevertheless have us disregard the interpretation of Jones & Laughlin which we recently espoused in Curtis v. Loether and Pernell v. Southall Realty, reading it instead as a holding solely that the entire proceeding before the NLRB was really equitable in nature; and they would have us entirely disregard Block v. *456 Hirsh, supra. They would have us disregard the dictum in Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22 (1932), that the adjudication of congressionally created public rights may be assigned to administrative agencies, as well as the similar holdings in Lloyd Sabaudo Societa v. Elting, 287 U. S. 329 (1932); Oceanic Nav. Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U. S. 320 (1909); Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land Co., 18 How. 272 (1856); Phillips v. Commissioner, 283 U. S. 589 (1931); and Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U. S. 391 (1938).

None of the grounds tendered for so reinterpreting the Seventh Amendment is convincing. It is suggested that in some of the cases, Elting, Oceanic, Murray’s Lessee, Phillips, and Helvering, the Seventh Amendment was not expressly put in issue. But these cases are clear enough that in the context involved, there was no requirement that the courts be involved at all in the factfinding process in the first instance. It is difficult to believe that these holdings or dicta did not subsume the proposition that a jury trial was not required. Furthermore, there are the remaining cases where the Court expressly held or observed that the Seventh Amendment did not bar administrative factfindings. Jones & Laughlin, Block, Pernell, and Curtis.

Second, it is argued with some force that cases such as Murray’s Lessee, Elting, Oceanic, Phillips, and Helvering all deal with the exercise of sovereign powers that are inherently in the exclusive domain of the Federal Government and critical to its very existence—the power over immigration, the importation of goods, and taxation—and that the theory of those cases is inapplicable where the Government exercises other powers that petitioners apparently regard as less fundamental, less exclusive, and less vital to the existence of the Nation, such as the power to regulate commerce among the several States, the latter being the power Congress sought to exercise in enacting the statute at issue here. The difficulty with this argument is that the Court in these cases, and in *457others, did not appear to confine its holdings in this manner. In Murray’s Lessee the Court referred to “matters, involving public rights [that] congress may or may not bring within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, as it may deem proper.” 18 How., at 284. In Oceanic, which sustained the administrative imposition of a fine for the wrongful importation of aliens, the Court said that its ruling was in accordance with “settled judicial construction” that “not only as to tariff but as to internal revenue, taxation and other subjects” Congress could “impose appropriate obligations and sanction their enforcement by reasonable money penalties, giving to executive officers the power to enforce such penalties without the necessity of invoking the judicial power.” 214 U. S., at 339. (Emphasis added.) Crowell spoke broadly of the distinction between cases of private right and those which arise between the Government and persons subject to its authority “in connection with the performance of the constitutional functions of the executive or legislative departments,” see supra, at 452, and gave “familiar illustrations” of the permissible use of administrative agencies in connection with the exercise of such congressional powers as “interstate and foreign commerce.” 285 U. S., at 51. Helvering v. Mitchell, supra, at 402-403, relying on Oceanic and similar cases, stated simply that “the determination of the facts upon which liability is based may be by an administrative agency instead of a jury.” It is also apparent that Jones & Laughlin, Pernell, and Curtis are not amenable to the limitations suggested by petitioners.

Third is the assertion that the right to jury trial was never intended to depend on the identity of the forum to which Congress has chosen to submit a dispute; otherwise, it is said, Congress could utterly destroy the right to a jury trial by always providing for administrative rather than judicial resolution of the vast range of cases that now arise in the courts. *458The argument is well put, but it overstates the holdings of our prior cases and is in any event unpersuasive. Our prior cases support administrative factfinding in only those situations involving “public rights,” e. g., where the Government is involved in its sovereign capacity under an otherwise valid statute creating enforceable public rights. Wholly private tort, contract, and property cases, as well as a vast range of other cases, are not at all implicated.

More to the point, it is apparent from the history of jury trial in civil matters that factfinding, which is the essential function of the jury in civil cases, Colgrove v. Battin, 413 U. S. 149, 157 (1973), was never the exclusive province of the jury under either the English or American legal systems at the time of the adoption of the Seventh Amendment; and the question whether a fact would be found by a jury turned to a considerable degree on the nature of the forum in which a litigant found himself. Critical factfinding was performed without juries in suits in equity, and there were no juries in admiralty, Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433 (1830); nor were there juries in the military justice system. The jury was the factfinding mode in most suits in the common-law courts, but it was not exclusively so: Condemnation was a suit at common law but constitutionally could be tried without a jury, Kohl v. United States, 91 U. S. 367, 375-376 (1876); Bauman v. Ross, 167 U. S. 548, 593 (1897); United States v. Reynolds, 397 U. S. 14, 18 (1970). “[M]any civil as well as criminal proceedings at common law were without a jury.” Kohl v. United States, supra, at 376. The question whether a particular case was to be tried in a court of equity—without a jury—or a court of law—with a jury—did not depend on whether the suit involved factfinding or on the nature of the facts to be found. Factfinding could be a critical matter either at law or in equity. Rather, as a general rule, the decision turned on whether courts of law supplied a cause of action and an *459adequate remedy to the litigant.14 If it did, then the case would be tried in a court of law before a jury. Otherwise the case would be tried to a court of equity sitting without a jury. Thus, suits for damages for breach of contract, for example, were suits at common law with the issues of the making of the contract and its breach to be decided by a jury; but specific performance was a remedy unavailable in a court of law and where such relief was sought the case would be tried in a court of equity with the facts as to making and breach to be ascertained by the court.

The Seventh Amendment was declaratory of the existing law, for it required only that jury trial in suits at common law was to be “preserved.” It thus did not purport to require a jury trial where none was required before. Moreover, it did not seek to change the factfinding mode in equity or admiralty or to freeze equity jurisdiction as it existed in 1789, preventing it from developing new remedies where those available in courts of law were inadequate. Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U. S. 531 (1970), is instructive in this respect. We there held that a jury trial is required in stockholder derivative suits where, if the corporation itself had sued, a jury trial would have been available to the corporation. It is apparent, however, that prior to the 1938 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure merging the law and equity functions of the federal courts, the very suit involved in Bernhard would have been in a court of equity sitting without a jury, not because the underlying issue was any different at all from the issue the corporation would have presented had it sued, but because the stockholder plaintiff who was denied standing in a court of law to sue on the issue was enabled in proper circumstances, starting in the early part *460of the 19th century, to sue in equity on behalf of the company.

The point is that the Seventh Amendment was never intended to establish the jury as the exclusive mechanism for factfinding in civil cases. It took the existing legal order as it found it, and there is little or no basis for concluding that the Amendment should now be interpreted to provide an impenetrable barrier to administrative factfinding under otherwise valid federal regulatory statutes. We cannot conclude that the Amendment rendered Congress powerless—when it concluded that remedies available in courts of law were inadequate to cope with a problem within Congress’ power to regulate—to create new public rights and remedies by statute and commit their enforcement, if it chose, to a tribunal other than a court of law—such as an administrative agency—in which facts are not found by juries. Indeed, as the Oceanic opinion said, the “settled judicial construction” was to the contrary “from the beginning.” 214 U. S., at 339. That case indicated, as had Hepner v. United States, 213 U. S. 103 (1909), that the Government could commit the enforcement of statutes and the imposition and collection of fines to the judiciary, in which event jury trial would be required, see also United States v. Regan, 232 U. S. 37 (1914), but that the United States could also validly opt for administrative enforcement, without judicial trials. See also Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U. S., at 402-403, and Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S., at 50-51.15

Thus, history and our cases support the proposition that the *461right to a jury trial turns not solely on the nature of the issue to be resolved but also on the forum in which it is to be resolved.16 Congress found the common-law and other existing remedies for work injuries resulting from unsafe working conditions to be inadequate to protect the Nation’s working men and women. It created a new cause of action, and remedies therefor, unknown to the common law, and placed their enforcement in a tribunal supplying speedy and expert resolutions of the issues involved. The Seventh Amendment is no bar to the creation of new rights or to their enforcement outside the regular courts of law.

The judgments below are affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Mr. Justice Blackmun took no part in the decision of these cases.

Justice Souter

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question here is whether the interpretation of a so-called patent claim, the portion of the patent document that defines the scope of the patentee’s rights, is a matter of law reserved entirely for the court, or subject to a Seventh Amendment guarantee that a jury will determine the meaning of any disputed term of art about which expert testimony is offered. We hold that the construction of a patent, including terms of art within its claim, is exclusively within the province of the court.

*373I

The Constitution empowers Congress “[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Art. I, §8, cl. 8. Congress first exercised this authority in 1790, when it provided for the issuance of “letters patent,” Act of Apr. 10, 1790, ch. 7, § 1,1 Stat. 109, which, like their modern counterparts, granted inventors “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing the patented invention,” in exchange for full disclosure of an invention, H. Schwartz, Patent Law and Practice 1, 33 (2d ed. 1995). It has long been understood that a patent must describe the exact scope of an invention and its manufacture to “secure to [the patentee] all to which he is entitled, [and] to apprise the public of what is still open to them.” McClain v. Ortmayer, 141 U. S. 419, 424 (1891). Under the modern American system, these objectives are served by two distinct elements of a patent document. First, it contains a specification describing the invention “in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art ... to make and use the same.” 35 U. S. C. § 112; see also 3 E. Lipscomb, Walker on Patents § 10:1, pp. 183-184 (3d ed. 1985) (Lipscomb) (listing the requirements for a specification). Second, a patent includes one or more “claims,” which “particularly poin[t] out and distinctly clai[m] the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.” 35 U. S. C. § 112. “A claim covers and secures a process, a machine, a manufacture, a composition of matter, or a design, but never the function or result of either, nor the scientific explanation of their operation.” 6 Lipscomb §21:17, at 315-316. The claim “define[s] the scope of a patent grant,” 3 id., § 11:1, at 280, and functions to forbid not only exact copies of an invention, but products that go to “the heart of an invention but avoids the literal language of the claim by making a *374noncritical change,” Schwartz, supra, at 82.1 In this opinion, the word “claim” is used only in this sense peculiar to patent law.

Characteristically, patent lawsuits charge what is known as infringement, Schwartz, supra, at 75, and rest on allegations that the defendant “without authority ma[de], use[d] or [sold the] patented invention, within the United States during the term of the patent therefor_” 35 U. S. C. § 271(a). Victory in an infringement suit requires a finding that the patent claim “covers the alleged infringer’s product or process,” which in turn necessitates a determination of “what the words in the claim mean.” Schwartz, supra, at 80; see also 3 Lipscomb § 11:2, at 288-290.

Petitioner in this infringement suit, Markman, owns United States Reissue Patent No. 33,054 for his “Inventory Control and Reporting System for Drycleaning Stores.” The patent describes a system that can monitor and report the status, location, and movement of clothing in a dry-cleaning establishment. The Markman system consists of a keyboard and data processor to generate written records for each transaction, including a bar code readable by optical detectors operated by employees, who log the progress of clothing through the dry-cleaning process. Respondent Westview's product also includes a keyboard and processor, and it lists charges for the dry-cleaning services on bar-coded tickets that can be read by portable optical detectors.

Markman brought an infringement suit against Westview and Althon Enterprises, an operator of dry-cleaning estab*375lishments using Westview’s products (collectively, West-view). Westview responded that Markman’s patent is not infringed by its system because the latter functions merely to record an inventory of receivables by tracking invoices and transaction totals, rather than to record and track an inventory of articles of clothing. Part of the dispute hinged upon the meaning of the word “inventory,” a term found in Markman’s independent claim 1, which states that Mark-man’s product can “maintain an inventory total” and “detect and localize spurious additions to inventory.” The case was tried before a jury, which heard, among others, a witness produced by Markman who testified about the meaning of the claim language.

After the jury compared the patent to Westview’s device, it found an infringement of Markman’s independent claim 1 and dependent claim 10.2 The District Court nevertheless granted Westview’s deferred motion for judgment as a matter of law, one of its reasons being that the term “inventory” in Markman’s patent encompasses “both cash inventory and the actual physical inventory of articles of clothing.” 772 F. Supp. 1535, 1537-1538 (ED Pa. 1991). Under the trial court’s construction of the patent, the production, sale, or use of a tracking system for dry cleaners would' not infringe Markman’s patent unless the product was capable of tracking articles of clothing throughout the cleaning process and generating reports about their status and location. Since West-view’s system cannot do these things, the District Court directed a verdict on the ground that Westview’s device does not have the “means to maintain an inventory total” and thus cannot “ ‘detect and localize spurious additions to inventory as well, as spurious deletions therefrom,’” as required by claim 1. Id., at 1537.

*376Markman appealed, arguing it was error for the District Court to substitute its construction of the disputed claim term ‘inventory’ for the construction the jury had presumably given it. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed, holding the interpretation of claim terms to be the exclusive province of the court and the Seventh Amendment to be consistent with that conclusion. 52 F. 3d 967 (1995). Markman sought our review on each point, and we granted certiorari. 515 U. S. 1192 (1995). We now affirm.

II

The Seventh Amendment provides that “[i]n Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved . . . .” U. S. Const., Arndt. 7. Since Justice Story’s day, United States v. Wonson, 28 F. Cas. 745, 750 (No. 16,750) (CC Mass. 1812), we have understood that “[t]he right of trial by jury thus preserved is the right which existed under the English common law when the Amendment was adopted.” Baltimore & Carolina Line, Inc. v. Redman, 295 U. S. 654, 657 (1985). In keeping with our longstanding adherence to this “historical test,” Wolfram, The Constitutional History of the Seventh Amendment, 57 Minn. L. Rev. 639, 640-643 (1973), we ask, first, whether we are dealing with a cause of action that either was tried at law at the time of the founding or is at least analogous to one that was, see, e. g., Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412, 417 (1987). If the action in question belongs in the law category, we then ask whether the particular trial decision must fall to the jury in order to preserve the substance of the common-law right as it existed in 1791. See infra, at 377-378.3

*377A

As to the first issue, going to the character of the cause of action, “[t]he form of our analysis is familiar. ‘First we compare the statutory action to 18th-century actions brought in the courts of England prior to the merger of the courts of law and equity.’” Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33, 42 (1989) (citation omitted). Equally familiar is the descent of today’s patent infringement action from the infringement actions tried at law in the 18th century, and there is no dispute that infringement cases today must be tried to a jury, as their predecessors were more than two centuries ago. See, e.g., Bramah v. Hardcastle, 1 Carp. P. C. 168 (K. B. 1789).

B

This conclusion raises the second question, whether a particular issue occurring within a jury trial (here the construction of a patent claim) is itself necessarily a jury issue, the guarantee being essential to preserve the right to a jury’s resolution of the ultimate dispute. In some instances the answer to this second question may be easy because of clear historical evidence that the very subsidiary question was so regarded under the English practice of leaving the issue for a jury. But when, as here, the old practice provides no clear answer, see infra, at 378-380, we are forced to make a judgment about the scope of the Seventh Amendment guarantee without the benefit of any foolproof test.

The Court has repeatedly said that the answer to the second question “must depend on whether the jury must shoulder this responsibility as necessary to preserve the ‘substance of the common-law right of trial by jury.’ ” Tull v. United States, supra, at 426 (emphasis added) (quoting Colgrove v. Battin, 413 U. S. 149, 157 (1973)); see also Baltimore & Carolina Line, supra, at 657. ““‘Only those incidents which are regarded as fundamental, as inherent in and of the essence of the system of trial by jury, are placed be*378yond the reach of the legislature.’”” Tull v. United States, supra, at 426 (citations omitted); see also Galloway v. United States, 319 U. S. 372, 392 (1943).

The “substance of the common-law right” is, however, a pretty blunt instrument for drawing distinctions. We have tried to sharpen it, to be sure, by reference to the distinction between substance and procedure. See Baltimore & Carolina Line, supra, at 657; see also Galloway v. United States, supra, at 390-391; Ex parte Peterson, 253 U. S. 300, 309 (1920); Walker v. New Mexico & Southern Pacific R. Co., 165 U. S. 593, 596 (1897); but see Sun Oil Co. v. Wortman, 486 U. S. 717, 727 (1988). We have also spoken of the line as one between issues of fact and law. See Baltimore & Carolina Line, supra, at 657; see also Ex parte Peterson, supra, at 310; Walker v. New Mexico & Southern Pacific R. Co., supra, at 597; but see Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U. S. 273, 288 (1982).

But the sounder course, when available, is to classify a mongrel practice (like construing a term of art following receipt of evidence) by using the historical method, much as we do in characterizing the suits and actions within which they arise. Where there is no exact antecedent, the best hope lies in comparing the modern practice to earlier ones whose allocation to court or jury we do know, cf. Baltimore & Carolina Line, supra, at 659, 660; Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U. S. 474, 477, 482 (1935), seeking the best analogy we can draw between an old and the new, see Tull v. United States, supra, at 420-421 (we must search the English common law for “appropriate analogies” rather than a “precisely analogous common-law cause of action”).

C

“Prior to 1790 nothing in the nature of a claim had appeared either in British patent practice or in that of the *379American states,” Lutz, Evolution of the Claims of U. S. Patents, 20 J. Pat. Off Soc. 134 (1938), and we have accordingly found no direct antecedent of modern claim construction in the historical sources. Claim practice did not achieve statutory recognition until the passage of the Act of July 4, 1836, ch. 367, § 6, 5 Stat. 119, and inclusion of a claim did not become a statutory requirement until 1870, Act of July 8,1870, eh. 230, § 26,16 Stat. 201; see 1 A. Deller, Patent Claims § 4, p. 9 (2d ed. 1971). Although, as one historian has observed, as early as 1850 “judges were ... beginning to express more frequently the idea that in seeking to ascertain the invention ‘claimed’ in a patent the inquiry should be limited to interpreting the summary, or ‘claim,’ ” Lutz, supra, at 145, “[t]he idea that the claim is just as important if not more important than the description and drawings did not develop until the Act of 1870 or thereabouts.” Deller, supra, §4, at 9.

At the time relevant for Seventh Amendment analogies, in contrast, it was the specification, itself a relatively new development, H. Dutton, The Patent System and Inventive Activity During the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1852, pp. 75-76 (1984), that represented the key to the patent. Thus, patent litigation in that early period was typified by so-called novelty actions, testing whether “any essential part of [the patent had been] disclosed to the public before,” Huddart v. Grimshaw, Dav. Pat. Cas. 265, 298 (K. B. 1803), and “enablement” cases, in which juries were asked to determine whether the specification described the invention well enough to allow members of the appropriate trade to reproduce it, see, e. g., Arkwright v. Nightingale, Dav. Pat. Cas. 37, 60 (C. P. 1785).

The closest 18th-century analogue of modern claim construction seems, then, to have been the construction of specifications, and as to that function the mere smattering *380of patent cases that we have from this period4 shows no established jury practice sufficient to support an argument by analogy that today’s construction of a claim should be a guaranteed jury issue. New of the case reports even touch upon the proper interpretation of disputed terms in the specifications at issue, see, e. g., Bramah v. Hardcastle, 1 Carp. P. C. 168 (K. B. 1789); King v. Else, 1 Carp. P. C. 103, Dav. Pat. Cas. 144 (K. B. 1785); Dollond’s Case, 1 Carp. P. C. 28 (C. P. 1758); Administrators of Calthorp v. Waymans, 3 Keb. 710, 84 Eng. Rep. 966 (K. B. 1676), and none demonstrates that the definition of such a term was determined by the jury.5 This absence of an established practice should not surprise us, given the primitive state of jury patent practice at the end of the 18th century, when juries were still new to the field. Although by 1791 more than a century had passed since the enactment of the Statute of Monopolies, which pro*381vided that the validity of any monopoly should be determined in accordance with the common law, patent litigation had remained within the jurisdiction of the Privy Council until 1752 and hence without the option of a jury trial. E. Walterscheid, Early Evolution of the United States Patent Law: Antecedents (Part 3), 77 J. Pat. & Tm. Off. Soc. 771, 771-776 (1995). Indeed, the state of patent law in the common-law courts before 1800 led one historian to observe that “the reported cases are destitute of any decision of importance .... At the end of the eighteenth century, therefore, the Common Law Judges were left to pick up the threads of the principles of law without the aid of recent and reliable precedents.” Hulme, On the Consideration of the Patent Grant, Past and Present, 13 L. Q. Rev. 313,318 (1897). Earlier writers expressed similar discouragement at patent law’s amorphous character,6 and, as late as the 1830’s, English commentators were irked by enduring confusion in the field. See Dutton, supra, at 69-70.

Markman seeks to supply what the early case reports lack in so many words by relying on decisions like Turner v. Winter, 1 T. R. 602, 99 Eng. Rep. 1274 (K. B. 1787), and Arkwright v. Nightingale, Dav. Pat. Cas. 37 (C. P. 1785), to argue that the 18th-century juries must have acted as definers of patent terms just to reach the verdicts we know they rendered in patent cases turning on enablement or novelty. But the conclusion simply does not follow. There is no more reason to infer that juries supplied plenary interpretation of written instruments in patent litigation than in other cases implicating the meaning of documentary terms, and we do know that in other kinds of cases during this period judges, *382not juries, ordinarily construed written documents.7 The probability that the judges were doing the same thing in the patent litigation of the time is confirmed by the fact that as soon as the English reports did begin to describe the construction of patent documents, they show the judges construing the terms of the specifications. See Bovill v. Moore, Dav. Pat. Cas. 361, 399, 404 (C. P. 1816) (judge submits question of novelty to the jury only after explaining some of the language and “stat[ing] in what terms the specification runs”); cf. Russell v. Cowley & Dixon, Webs. Pat. Cas. 457, 467-470 (Exch. 1834) (construing the terms of the specification in reviewing a verdict); Haworth v. Hardcastle, Webs. Pat. Cas. 480, 484-485 (1834) (same). This evidence is in fact buttressed by cases from this Court; when they first reveal actual practice, the practice revealed is of the judge construing the patent. See, e. g., Winans v. New York & Erie R. Co., 21 How. 88, 100 (1859); Winans v. Denmead, 15 How. 330, 338 (1854); Hogg v. Emerson, 6 How. 437, 484 (1848); cf. Parker v. Hulme, 18 F. Cas. 1138 (No. 10,740) (CC ED Pa. 1849). These indications of our patent practice are the more impressive for being all of a piece with what we know about the analogous contemporary practice of inter*383preting terms within a land patent, where it fell to the judge, not the jury, to construe the words.8

D

Losing, then, on the contention that juries generally had interpretive responsibilities during the 18th century, Mark-man seeks a different anchor for analogy in the more modest contention that even if judges were charged with construing most terms in the patent, the art of defining terms of art employed in a specification fell within the province of the jury. Again, however, Markman has no authority from the period in question, but relies instead on the later case of Neilson v. Harford, Webs. Pat. Cas. 828 (Exch. 1841). There, an exchange between the judge and the lawyers indicated that although the construction of a patent was ordinarily for the court, id., at 349 (Alderson, B.), judges should “leav[e] the question of words of art to the jury,” id., at 350 (Alderson, B.); see also id., at 370 (judgment of the court); Hill v. Evans, 4 De. G. F. & J. 288, 293-294, 45 Eng. Rep. 1195,1197 (Ch. 1862). Without, however, in any way disparaging the weight to which Baron Alderson’s view is entitled, the most we can say is that an English report more than 70 years after the time that concerns us indicates an exception to what probably had been occurring earlier.9 In place of *384Markman’s inference that this exceptional practice existed in 1791 there is at best only a possibility that it did, and for anything more than a possibility we have found no scholarly authority.

Ill

Since evidence of common-law practice at the time of the framing does not entail application of the Seventh Amendment’s jury guarantee to the construction of the claim document, we must look elsewhere to characterize this determination of meaning in order to allocate it as between court or jury. We accordingly consult existing precedent10 and consider both the relative interpretive skills of judges and juries and the statutory policies that ought to be furthered by the allocation.

A

The two elements of a simple patent case, construing the patent and determining whether infringement occurred, were characterized by the former patent practitioner, Justice Curtis.11 “The first is a question of law, to be determined by the court, construing the letters-patent, and the description of the invention and specification of claim annexed to them. The second is a question of fact, to be submitted to a jury.” Winans v. Denmead, supra, at 338; see Winans v. *385 New York & Erie R. Co., supra, at 100; Hogg v. Emerson, supra, at 484; cf. Parker v. Hulme, supra, at 1140.

In arguing for a different allocation of responsibility for the first question, Markman relies primarily on two cases, Bischoff v. Wethered, 9 Wall. 812 (1870), and Tucker v. Spalding, 13 Wall. 453 (1872). These are said to show that evidence of the meaning of patent terms was offered to 19th-century juries, and thus to imply that the meaning of a documentary term was a jury issue whenever it was subject to evidentiary proof. That is not what Markman’s cases show, however.

In order to resolve the Bischoff suit implicating the construction of rival patents, we considered “whether the court below was bound to compare the two specifications, and to instruct the jury, as a matter of law, whether the inventions therein described were, or were not, identical.” 9 Wall., at 813 (statement of the case). We said it was not bound to do that, on the ground that investing the court with so disposi-tive a role would improperly eliminate the jury’s function in answering the ultimate question of infringement. On that ultimate issue, expert testimony had been admitted on “the nature of the various mechanisms or manufactures described in the different patents produced, and as to the identity or diversity between them.” Id., at 814. Although the jury’s consideration of that expert testimony in resolving the question of infringement was said to impinge upon the well-established principle “that it is the province of the court, and not the jury, to construe the meaning of documentary evidence,” id., at 815, we decided that it was not so. We said:

“[T]he specifications ... profess to describe mechanisms and complicated machinery, chemical compositions and other manufactured products, which have their existence in pais, outside of the documents themselves; and which are commonly described by terms of the art or mystery to which they respectively belong; and these *386descriptions and terms of art often require peculiar knowledge and education to understand them aright.... Indeed, the whole subject-matter of a patent is an embodied conception outside of the patent itself.... This outward embodiment of the terms contained in the patent is the thing invented, and is to be properly sought, like the explanation of all latent ambiguities arising from the description of external things, by evidence in pais.” Ibid.

Bischoff does not then, as Markman contends, hold that the use of expert testimony about the meaning of terms of art requires the judge to submit the question of their construction to the jury. It is instead a case in which the Court drew a line between issues of document interpretation and product identification, and held that expert testimony was properly presented to the jury on the latter, ultimate issue, whether the physical objects produced by the patent were identical. The Court did not see the decision as bearing upon the appropriate treatment of disputed terms. As the opinion emphasized, the Court’s “view of the case is not intended to, and does not, trench upon the doctrine that the construction of written instruments is the province of the court alone. It is not the construction of the instrument, but the character of the thing invented, which is sought in questions of identity and diversity of inventions.” Id., at 816 (emphasis added). Tucker, the second case proffered by Markman, is to the same effect. Its reasoning rested expressly on Bischoff, and it just as clearly noted that in addressing the ultimate issue of mixed fact and law, it was for the court to “lay down to the jury the law which should govern them.” Tucker, supra, at 455.12

*387If the line drawn in these two opinions is a fine one, it is one that the Court has drawn repeatedly in explaining the respective roles of the jury and judge in patent cases,13 and one understood by commentators writing in the aftermath of the cases Markman cites. Walker, for example, read Bischoff as holding that the question of novelty is not decided by a construction of the prior patent, “but depends rather upon the outward embodiment of the terms contained in the [prior patent]; and that such outward embodiment is to be properly sought, like the explanation of latent ambiguities arising from the description of external things, by evidence in pais.” A. Walker, Patent Laws §75, p. 68 (3d ed. 1895). He also emphasized in the same treatise that matters of claim construction, even those aided by expert testimony, are questions for the court:

“Questions of construction are questions of law for the judge, not questions of fact for the jury. As it cannot be expected, however, that judges will always possess the requisite knowledge of the meaning of the terms of art or science used in letters patent, it often becomes necessary that they should avail themselves of the light furnished by experts relevant to the significance of such words and phrases. The judges are not, however, obliged to blindly follow such testimony.” Id., § 189, at 173 (footnotes omitted).

Virtually the same description of the court’s use of evidence in its interpretive role was set out in another contemporary treatise:

*388“The duty of interpreting letters-patent has been committed to the courts. A patent is a legal instrument, to be construed, like other legal instruments, according to its tenor. . .. Where technical terms are used, or where the qualities of substances or operations mentioned or any similar data necessary to the comprehension of the language of the patent are unknown to the judge, the testimony of witnesses may be received upon these subjects, and any other means of information be employed. But in the actual interpretation of the patent the court proceeds upon its own responsibility, as an arbiter of the law, giving to the patent its true and final character and force.” 2 W. Robinson, Law of Patents §782, pp. 481-483 (1890) (emphasis added; footnotes omitted).

In sum, neither Bischoff nor Tucker indicates that juries resolved the meaning of terms of art in construing a patent, and neither case undercuts Justice Curtis’s authority.

B

Where history and precedent provide no clear answers, functional considerations also play their part in the choice between judge and jury to define terms of art. We said in Miller v. Fenton, 474 U. S. 104, 114 (1985), that when an issue “falls somewhere between a pristine legal standard and a simple historical fact, the fact/law distinction at times has turned on a determination that, as a matter of the sound administration of justice, one judicial actor is better positioned than another to decide the issue in question.” So it turns out here, for judges, not juries, are the better suited to find the acquired meaning of patent terms.

The construction of written instruments is one of those things that judges often do and are likely to do better than jurors unburdened by training in exegesis. Patent construction in particular “is a special occupation, requiring, like all others, special training and practice. The judge, from his training and discipline, is more likely to give a proper *389interpretation to such instruments than a jury; and he is, therefore, more likely to be right, in performing such a duty, than a jury can be expected to be.” Parker v. Hulme, 18 F. Cas., at 1140. Such was the understanding nearly a century and a half ago, and there is no reason to weigh the respective strengths of judge and jury differently in relation to the modern claim; quite the contrary, for “the claims of patents have become highly technical in many respects as the result of special doctrines relating to the proper form and scope of claims that have been developed by the courts and the Patent Office.” Woodward, Definiteness and Particularity in Patent Claims, 46 Mich. L. Rev. 755, 765 (1948).

Markman would trump these considerations with his argument that a jury should decide a question of meaning peculiar to a trade or profession simply because the question is a subject of testimony requiring credibility determinations, which are the jury’s forte. It is, of course, true that credibility judgments have to be made about the experts who testify in patent cases, and in theory there could be a case in which a simple credibility judgment would suffice to choose between experts whose testimony was equally consistent with a patent’s internal logic. But our own experience with document construction leaves us doubtful that trial courts will run into many cases like that. In the main, we expect, any credibility determinations will be subsumed within the necessarily sophisticated analysis of the whole document, required by the standard construction rule that a term can be defined only in a way that comports with the instrument as a whole. See Bates v. Coe, 98 U. S. 31, 38 (1878); 6 Lipscomb § 21:40, at 393; 2 Robinson, supra, § 734, at 484; Woodward, supra, at 765; cf. U S. Industrial Chemicals, Inc. v. Carbide & Carbon Chemicals Co., 315 U. S. 668, 678 (1942); cf. 6 Lipscomb § 21:40, at 393. Thus, in these cases a jury’s capabilities to evaluate demeanor, cf. Miller, supra, at 114, 117, to sense the “mainsprings of human conduct,” Commissioner v. Duberstein, 363 U. S. 278, 289 (1960), or to reflect community *390standards, United States v. McConney, 728 F. 2d 1195, 1204 (CA9 1984) (en banc), are much less significant than a trained ability to evaluate the testimony in relation to the overall structure of the patent. The decisionmaker vested with the task of construing the patent is in the better position to ascertain whether an expert’s proposed definition fully comports with the specification and claims and so will preserve the patent’s internal coherence. We accordingly think there is sufficient reason to treat construction of terms of art like many other responsibilities that we cede to a judge in the normal course of trial, notwithstanding its evidentiary underpinnings.

C

Finally, we see the importance of uniformity in the treatment of a given patent as an independent reason to allocate all issues of construction to the court. As we noted in General Elec. Co. v. Wabash Appliance Corp., 304 U. S. 364, 369 (1938), “[t]he limits of a patent must be known for the protection of the patentee, the encouragement of the inventive genius of others and the assurance that the subject of the patent will be dedicated ultimately to the public.” Otherwise, a “zone of uncertainty which enterprise and experimentation may enter only at the risk of infringement claims would discourage invention only a little less than unequivocal foreclosure of the field,” United Carbon Co. v. Binney & Smith Co., 317 U. S. 228, 236 (1942), and “[t]he public [would] be deprived of rights supposed to belong to it, without being clearly told what it is that limits these rights.” Merrill v. Yeomans, 94 U. S. 568, 573 (1877). It was just for the sake of such desirable uniformity that Congress created the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit as an exclusive appellate court for patent cases, H. R. Rep. No. 97-312, pp. 20-23 (1981), observing that increased uniformity would “strengthen the United States patent system in such a way as to foster technological growth and industrial innovation.” Id., at 20.

*391Uniformity would, however, be ill served by submitting issues of document construction to juries. Making them jury issues would not, to be sure, necessarily leave eviden-tiary questions of meaning wide open in every new court in which a patent might be litigated, for principles of issue preclusion would ordinarily foster uniformity. Cf. Blonder-Tongue Laboratories, Inc. v. University of III. Foundation, 402 U. S. 313 (1971). But whereas issue preclusion could not be asserted against new and independent infringement defendants even within a given jurisdiction, treating interpretive issues as purely legal will promote (though it will not guarantee) intrajurisdictional certainty through the application of stare decisis on those questions not yet subject to interjurisdictional uniformity under the authority of the single appeals court.

* * *

Accordingly, we hold that the interpretation of the word “inventory” in this case is an issue for the judge, not the jury, and affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

It is so ordered.