Cite as: 504 U. S. 689 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
that the source of the constraint on jurisdiction from Barber was not Article III; otherwise the Court itself would have lacked jurisdiction over appeals from these legislative courts. See National Mut. Ins. Co. v. Tidewater Transfer Co., 337 U. S. 582, 643 (1949) (Vinson, C. J., dissenting) ("We can no more review a legislative court's decision of a case which is not among those enumerated in Art. III than we can hear a case from a state court involving purely state law questions"). We therefore have no difficulty concluding that when the Barber Court "disclaim[ed] altogether any jurisdiction in the courts of the United States upon the subject of divorce," 21 How., at 584, it was not basing its statement on the Constitution.3
B
That Article III, § 2, does not mandate the exclusion of domestic relations cases from federal-court jurisdiction, however, does not mean that such courts necessarily must retain and exercise jurisdiction over such cases. Other constitutional provisions explain why this is so. Article I, § 8, cl. 9, for example, authorizes Congress "[t]o constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court" and Article III, § 1, states that "[t]he judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." The Court's cases state the rule that "if inferior federal courts were created, [Congress was not] required to invest them with all the jurisdiction it was authorized to bestow under Art. III." Palmore v. United States, 411 U. S. 389, 401 (1973).
3 We read Ohio ex rel. Popovici v. Agler, 280 U. S. 379 (1930), as in accord with this conclusion. In that case, the Court referenced the language in In re Burrus, 136 U. S. 586 (1890), regarding the domestic relations exception and then held that a state court was not precluded by the Constitution and relevant federal statutes from exercising jurisdiction over a divorce suit brought against the Roumanian vice-consul. See 280 U. S., at 383-384.
697
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