Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution gives the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction as to law and fact. Reading this, Antifederalist Framers such as George Mason and Richard Henry Lee anticipated problems even before ratification. So they succeeded in placing the Reexamination Clause into the 7th Amendment. Yet over time, the line between “errors of law” and “errors of fact” has eroded.
New Deal procedural devices such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) damaged the traditional interpretation of the Reexamination Clause. “Summary judgments” and “directed verdicts” appeared. In 1979, Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote, "[T]o sanction creation of procedural devices which limit the province of the jury to a greater degree than permitted at common law in 1791 is in direct contravention of the Seventh Amendment."
In a 1996 dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia stated, "It is not for us… to decide that the Seventh Amendment's restriction on federal-court review of jury findings has outlived its usefulness." Nevertheless, by 2001, despite 210 years of contrary understanding, using the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause, courts somehow decided punitive damages are a question of law.

Whenever you can change a definition to change a republic’s constitution, you earn the good dictatorship seal of approval. The slow-motion demolition of the power of the civil trial jury bears out what Anti-Federalists vainly tried to prevent with the Reexamination Clause. If modern circumstances required tort reform to reign in punitive damages, Congress or the States should have amended the Constitution. When any portion of the Constitution is flouted, because “everyone” agrees it is better that way, you live at risk.