492 U.S. 33 (1989)
The Chase & Sanborn Corporation filed a petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in 1983. A plan approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida then vested in respondent Nordberg, the trustee in bankruptcy, causes of action for fraudulent conveyances.
In 1985 respondent filed suit against petitioners Granfinanciera, S. A., and Medex, Ltda., in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleging that petitioners had received $1.7 million from Chase & Sanborn's corporate predecessor within one year of the bankruptcy petition without receiving consideration or reasonably equivalent value. The complaint sought to avoid the transfers and recover damages under 11 U. S. C. §§ 548(a)(1) and (a)(2), 550(a)(1) (1982 ed. and Supp. V).
The District Court referred the proceedings to the Bankruptcy Court.1 Over five months later respondent served a summons on petitioners in Bogota, Colombia shortly before the Colombian Government nationalized Granfinanciera.2 In their answer both petitioners requested a trial by jury on all issues so triable.3
The Bankruptcy Judge denied petitioners' request for a jury trial, deeming a suit to recover a fraudulent transfer a core action that originally, under the English common law, as I understand it, was a non-jury issue.4 Following a bench trial, the court dismissed with prejudice respondent's actual fraud claim but entered judgment for respondent on the constructive fraud claim in the amount of $1,500,000 against Granfinanciera and $180,000 against Medex.5 The District Court affirmed without discussing petitioners' claim that they were entitled to a jury trial.6
The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit also affirmed, 835 F. 2d 1341 (1988), ruling that petitioners lacked a statutory right to a jury trial because the constructive fraud provision contains no mention of such a right and 28 U. S. C. § 1411 affords jury trials only in personal injury or wrongful death suits, and that the Seventh Amendment supplied no right because fraudulent conveyance actions are equitable in nature and bankruptcy proceedings are inherently equitable.7 The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether petitioners were entitled to a jury trial, 486 U. S. 1054 (1988), and now reverses.8
Whether a person who has not submitted a claim against a bankruptcy estate has a right to a jury trial when sued by the trustee in bankruptcy to recover an allegedly fraudulent monetary transfer?9
The Seventh Amendment preserves the right to a jury trial in suits at common law where legal rights are to be ascertained and determined.10 This includes actions to recover fraudulent monetary transfers that would have been tried at law in 18th-century England through actions such as trover or money had and received.11 Congress may not assign adjudication of private rights like these to non-Article III tribunals sitting without juries when the defendant has not submitted a claim against the bankruptcy estate.12 The action does not arise as part of the claims allowance process and is not integral to the restructuring of debtor-creditor relations.
Yes. The established facts show that petitioners Granfinanciera, S.A., and Medex, Ltda., received $1.7 million from Chase & Sanborn's corporate predecessor within one year of the bankruptcy petition without receiving reasonably equivalent value and did not submit any claims against the bankruptcy estate.13 Respondent Nordberg, as trustee, sued in 1985 to recover the transfers as constructively and actually fraudulent under 11 U.S.C. §§ 548(a)(1), (a)(2), and 550(a)(1).14 These actions seek a determinate sum of money and are legal in nature because they are analogous to common-law actions for money had and received that were tried before juries in English courts of law.15
Because petitioners filed no claims against the estate, the suit does not arise as part of the process of allowance and disallowance of claims, and the Seventh Amendment therefore guarantees them a jury trial notwithstanding Congress's designation of fraudulent conveyance actions as core proceedings triable without juries in 28 U.S.C. § 157(b)(2)(H).16
The Seventh Amendment entitles petitioners to the jury trial they requested.17
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Scalia concurs in the judgment but joins only the portions of the opinion outside Part IV.18 He maintains that a matter of public rights whose adjudication Congress may assign to non-Article III tribunals must at a minimum arise between the government and others.19 The notion of assigning adjudication of a legal controversy between two private parties to a non-Article III federal tribunal is inconsistent with the origins of the public rights doctrine in Murray's Lessee.20
Scalia would return to the longstanding principle that the public rights doctrine requires the United States to be a party to the adjudication.21 On that basis he concurs in the conclusion that the Article III concomitant of a jury trial could not be eliminated here.22
Justice White dissents, arguing that the decision effectively overrules Katchen v. Landy sub silentio.23 The 1984 Amendments expressly classify fraudulent conveyance actions as core proceedings that Congress intended to be adjudicated and recovered in bankruptcy court under that court's usual procedures.24 He emphasizes that this classification is not a merely taxonomic change but a substantive statutory commitment that renders the Seventh Amendment inapplicable once Congress has placed the claims within the bankruptcy process.25
Bankruptcy courts function as specialized courts of equity in which jury trials would be incompatible with the statutory scheme and would go far to dismantle it.26 White further contends that the historical evidence is in equipoise and that the Court should defer to Congress's exercise of its Bankruptcy Clause power rather than impose a century-old conception of bankruptcy proceedings that Congress has rejected.27
Joined by Justice O'connor
Justice Blackmun dissents separately, agreeing generally with Justice White.28 He notes that the historical record is uncertain because fraudulent conveyance actions often appeared on the equity docket due to procedural needs for discovery, accounting, and other interim remedies before the Federal Rules unified law and equity.29 Blackmun concludes that the bankruptcy court as an equitable tribunal renders a jury incompatible with the statutory scheme under Katchen and Atlas Roofing.30
Congress acted within constitutional bounds by designating these claims as core proceedings integral to the bankruptcy process.31 He would respect Congress's judgment in fashioning a modern bankruptcy system that places basic rudiments of the process in the hands of an expert equitable tribunal.32