700
Opinion of the Court
stood to be English chancery practice, some guide to the meaning of the 1789 Act's jurisdictional grant. See, e. g., Robinson v. Campbell, 3 Wheat. 212, 221-222 (1818). We thus are content to rest our conclusion that a domestic relations exception exists as a matter of statutory construction not on the accuracy of the historical justifications on which it was seemingly based, but rather on Congress' apparent acceptance of this construction of the diversity jurisdiction provisions in the years prior to 1948, when the statute limited jurisdiction to "suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity." As the court in Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon v. Rosenstiel, 490 F. 2d 509, 514 (CA2 1973), observed: "More than a century has elapsed since the Barber dictum without any intimation of Congressional dissatisfaction. . . . Whatever Article III may or may not permit, we thus accept the Barber dictum as a correct interpretation of the Congressional grant." Considerations of stare decisis have particular strength in this context, where "the legislative power is implicated, and Congress remains free to alter what we have done." Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 172-173 (1989).
When Congress amended the diversity statute in 1948 to replace the law/equity distinction with the phrase "all civil actions," we presume Congress did so with full cognizance of the Court's nearly century-long interpretation of the prior statutes, which had construed the statutory diversity jurisdiction to contain an exception for certain domestic relations matters. With respect to the 1948 amendment, the Court has previously stated that "no changes of law or policy are to be presumed from changes of language in the revision unless an intent to make such changes is clearly expressed." Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp., 353 U. S. 222, 227 (1957); see also Finley v. United States, 490 U. S. 545, 554 (1989). With respect to such a longstanding and well-known construction of the diversity statute, and where Congress made substantive changes to the statute in other
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