832
Opinion of the Court
defendant to remove a case brought in state court under state law, thereby defeating a plaintiff's choice of forum, simply by raising a federal counterclaim. Second, conferring this power upon the defendant would radically expand the class of removable cases, contrary to the "[d]ue regard for the rightful independence of state governments" that our cases addressing removal require. See Shamrock Oil & Gas Corp. v. Sheets, 313 U. S. 100, 109 (1941) (internal quotation marks omitted). And finally, allowing responsive pleadings by the defendant to establish "arising under" jurisdiction would undermine the clarity and ease of administration of the well-pleaded-complaint doctrine, which serves as a "quick rule of thumb" for resolving jurisdictional conflicts. See Franchise Tax Bd., supra, at 11.
For these reasons, we decline to transform the longstanding well-pleaded-complaint rule into the "well-pleaded-complaint-or-counterclaim rule" urged by respondent.
B
Respondent argues, in the alternative, that even if a counterclaim generally cannot establish the original "arising under" jurisdiction of a district court, we should interpret the phrase "arising under" differently in ascertaining the Federal Circuit's jurisdiction. In respondent's view, effectuating Congress's goal of "promoting the uniformity of patent law," Brief for Respondent 21, requires us to interpret §§ 1295(a)(1) and 1338(a) to confer exclusive appellate jurisdiction on the Federal Circuit whenever a patent-law counterclaim is raised.3
3 Echoing a variant of this argument, Justice Ginsburg contends that "giv[ing] effect" to Congress's intention "to eliminate forum shopping and to advance uniformity in . . . patent law" requires that the Federal Circuit have exclusive jurisdiction whenever a patent claim was "actually adjudicated." Post, at 840 (opinion concurring in judgment). We rejected precisely this argument in Christianson, viz., the suggestion that the Federal
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007