Here is an excerpt from a law journal article explaining the rules for determining whether there is a right to a jury trial in a federal civil case.

James L. “Larry” Wright & M. Matthew Williams, "Remember the Alamo: The Seventh Amendment of the United States Constitution, the Doctrine of Incorporation, and State Caps on Jury Awards," 45 S. Tex. L. Rev. 449 (2004)(footnotes omitted):

The guarantees of the Seventh Amendment are facially simple; however, a significant body of federal case law has developed explaining and defining the right. At common law, the type of damages that the plaintiff sought, as well as the subject matter of the cause of action, determined which court would hear a litigant's case. Equity and admiralty courts did not have juries, while courts of law did. After the courts of law and equity were merged in 1938, the Supreme Court developed a "historical test" to reconcile which types of claims received Seventh Amendment protection. The historical test makes two inquiries: (1) whether the cause of action was tried at law at the time of the founding, or is at least analogous to one that was, and (2) if the action in question belongs in the law category, 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.

The most influential case in the initial development of the Seventh Amendment's historical test came from a Massachusetts federal circuit court. In United States v. Wonson, Justice Story considered whether the United States, as the appellant, could have an additional jury trial following its loss of the first jury trial, a common practice in Massachusetts state court at that time. Justice Story first held that this practice, while existing in the New England states, was not required under a federal statute. Then he added that a second jury trial would violate the Seventh Amendment prohibition on courts of the United States reexamining facts already tried by a jury. In reviewing the amendment, Justice Story made the following statement:

"Beyond all question, the common law here alluded to is not the common law of any individual state, (for it probably differs in all), but it is the common law of England, the grand reservoir of all our jurisprudence. It cannot be necessary for me to expound the grounds of this opinion, because they must be obvious to every person acquainted with the history of the law."

Because succeeding federal judges did not dare challenge Justice Story's "sweeping proclamation," the Supreme Court has almost exclusively applied a historical test that defines the Seventh Amendment's "rules of the common law" by reference to the laws of England as of the date of adoption in 1791, not to those of the various United States.

Therefore, under the historical test, the first clause of the Seventh Amendment ensures jury trials in suits seeking legal remedies, those that empanelled a jury under the English common law at the time the amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791. Consequently, suits seeking equitable remedies, customarily heard by courts of equity or admiralty that did not receive a jury trial at English common law in 1791, do not receive Seventh Amendment protections. While not every award of monetary relief constitutes a legal remedy, federal law has consistently held that the recovery of money damages for injury to persons or property is generally characterized as a legal remedy. Suits for punitive damages have been held to seek a legal remedy, but suits for restitutionary damages have been held to seek both legal and equitable remedies.

The Supreme Court also extends the amendment's jury guarantee to statutory claims unknown to the common law, requiring only that the claims "sound basically in tort" and seek legal relief. For example, applying the historical test to Title VII claims under § 1983, the Court has held that the statutory cause of action, though nonexistent at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791, is an action at law within the meaning of the Seventh Amendment and receives the guarantee of a jury trial.

Similarly, the Seventh Amendment also protects legal common-law causes of action included in congressional acts that attempt to delegate fact-finding away from the jury. The Supreme Court's analysis in such cases includes an article III examination of whether or not Congress has overstepped the constitutional bounds of its power under article I by legislating the types of cases federal courts can hear. Congress may decline to provide jury trials for causes of action involving statutory "public rights" or suits to which the federal government is a party, but it cannot eliminate a party's Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial merely by relabeling the cause of action to which it attaches and placing exclusive jurisdiction in an administrative agency or a specialized court of equity. The Court has recognized that if Congress was able to assign fact-finding in private causes of action to administrative agencies or other tribunals not involving juries, "Congress could render the Seventh Amendment a nullity."

The second clause of the Seventh Amendment states, "[N]o fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the Common Law." The Supreme Court excludes remittitur and judgments as a matter of law from the Seventh Amendment definition of reexamination. Directed verdicts were utilized at common law based upon errors of law or evidentiary insufficiency. Therefore, such reexamination is permitted under the amendment. This form of intervention by the trial court, however, does not really affect the function of the jury because fact-finding is still exclusively within the jury's purview.

It has long been established that the calculation of the amount of compensatory damages for noneconomic injury, such as pain and suffering, is a question of fact reserved for the jury. The Supreme Court holds this function of a jury in high regard, and jury fact-finding on damages, if supported by the evidence, cannot be simply thrown out. In fact, outside of certain narrow circumstances, any reexamination of jury awards raises Seventh Amendment concerns.