PSLRA and the 7th Amendment

Suja Thomas, my colleague here at UC Law who teaches civil procedure, has just posted on SSRN a provocative paper entitled "The Seventh Amendment Problem in PSLRA" in anticipation of the upcoming argument before the Supreme Court in Tellabs.  Suja has previously written that summary judgment motions violate the 7th Amendment right to a jury trial.  In this paper, she examines PSLRA's heightened requirement for scienter and finds it constitutionally problematic and not comporting with the substance of the common law jury trial.  She also proposes an alternative standard to dismiss a securities fraud claim that comports with the 7th Amendment.

Well worth reading for those of us who don't ordinarily think about the 7th Amendment!