Are arbitration clauses unconstitutional?

I might have misunderstood the case they were talking about.

The main case "Hot Coffee" deals with is the woman who burned herself when she spilled McDonald's coffee on herself. McDonald's wanted a jury trial and so they had one.

I guess there isn't an arbitration clause when you buy fast food but it seems like the case was supposed to go to arbitration until McDonald's decided on a jury trial.

On the third hand, the company that issued my credit card is incorporated in Delaware. Therefore, any legal dispute between this New-Jersey resident and it would seem to fall under federal jurisdiction as interstate commerce. No?

And on the fourth hand, it appears that the right to trial by jury is commonly guaranteed under state constitutions as well. To be sure, I didn't check all 50 of them. But the constitutions of my state, your state, and Boomerang's state all do guarantee it. So the substance of Boomerang's point remains unaffected: How can arbitration clauses pass muster under any constitutions, state or federal, that guarantee trial by jury as a fundamental right?

You forget that there's a jurisdictional minimum for diversity cases. If you rack up a $75,000 credit card bill, then you might have a federal case.

Because some fundamental rights, such as the right to a jury trial, can be waived by contract.

In any event, the result, to nobody’s surprise, was a brief and unanimous per curiam opinion restating the Supreme Court’s view that federal law preempts any state law purporting to prevent the arbitration “of a particular type of claim.” The case will join the long, and still unbroken, line of FAA cases enforcing arbitration clauses. The day presumably will come when the Supreme Court will confront an arbitration clause it does not find enforceable, but it didn’t come yesterday.