Seventh Amendment: Civil Juries, Arbitration, and Algorithmic Harm

The strongest objection is that arbitration and class waivers can reduce litigation abuse, legal fees, delay, jackpot verdicts, and coercive settlements. Businesses argue that public class actions often enrich lawyers while consumers receive tiny recoveries, and that juries can be unpredictable in technical cases.

That objection is strong enough to shape the remedy. The answer is not to ban all arbitration or romanticize every class action. It is to limit forced predispute waiver where public law and aggregated harms would otherwise disappear, while using early case management, fee scrutiny, evidence gates, and online access to reduce abusive litigation.

Businesses, platforms, employers, health systems, and government agencies may face more public litigation and less private repeat-player arbitration. Courts may need more funding and case management. Plaintiffs' lawyers may face stricter fee and evidence scrutiny. Consumers and workers may still face delay if courts are underfunded. Those costs are acceptable because public accountability cannot survive if the only practical forum is a contract term no one negotiated.