American Nat. Red Cross v. S. G., 505 U.S. 247, 13 (1992)

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Cite as: 505 U. S. 247 (1992)

Opinion of the Court

1948, ch. 704, § 4, 62 Stat. 1070. There is every reason to expect Congress to take great care in its use of explicit language when it wishes to confer exclusive jurisdiction, given our longstanding requirement to that effect.10 Its employment of explicitly jurisdictional language in the CCC's case thus raises no suggestion that its more laconic Red Cross amendment was not meant to confer concurrent federal jurisdiction.

Nor do the other two enactments support respondents' argument. The statutes were passed 12 years apart and employed verbally and doctrinally distinct formulations. Compare Banking Act of 1935, ch. 614, § 101, 49 Stat. 684, 692 (providing that suits involving FDIC "shall be deemed to arise under the laws of the United States"), with Act of Aug. 1, 1947, ch. 440, § 7, 61 Stat. 719 (providing that FCIC "may sue and be sued in its corporate name in any court of record of a State having general jurisdiction, or in any United States district court, and [that] jurisdiction is hereby conferred upon such district court to determine such controversies without regard to the amount in controversy").11 These differences are not merely semantic: the jurisdictional effect of the FDIC's provision depends on the 28 U. S. C. § 1331 grant of general federal-question jurisdiction, while the

10 See Claflin v. Houseman, 93 U. S. 130, 136 (1876) ("[O]ur judgment [has] been . . . to affirm [concurrent state-court] jurisdiction, where it is not excluded by express provision, or by incompatibility in its exercise arising from the nature of the particular case"); see also Charles Dowd Box Co. v. Courtney, 368 U. S. 502, 508 (1962) (Claflin's analysis of this question "has remained unmodified through the years").

11 Respondents do not repeat the Court of Appeals's argument that the original language of the FCIC charter tracked in all relevant respects that in the Red Cross's post-1947 charter, and that Congress's later amendment of the FCIC charter to make jurisdiction more explicit thus implicitly suggests that Congress considered that language insufficient to confer jurisdiction. See 938 F. 2d 1494, 1500 (CA1 1991). We note here only that the Red Cross adequately rebuts that argument. See Brief for Petitioner 42-43.

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