272
Scalia, J., dissenting
suffice to confer jurisdiction. The Court's reading of this language from Osborn as giving talismanic significance to any "mention" of federal courts is simply inconsistent with the fact that Osborn (like Deveaux) did not purport to confer on the words of the clause any meaning other than that suggested by their natural import.
This reading of Deveaux and Osborn is confirmed by our later decision in Bankers Trust Co. v. Texas & Pacific R. Co., 241 U. S. 295 (1916). There we held it to be "plain" that a railroad charter provision stating that the corporation "shall be able to sue and be sued . . . in all courts of law and equity within the United States," 16 Stat. 574, did not confer jurisdiction on any court. 241 U. S., at 303. Had our earlier cases stood for the "magic words" rule adopted by the Court today, we could have reached that conclusion simply by noting that the clause at issue did not contain a specific reference to the federal courts. That is not, however, what we did. Indeed, the absence of such specific reference was not even mentioned in the opinion. See id., at 303-305. Instead, as before, we sought to determine the sense of the provision by considering the ordinary meaning of its language in context. We concluded that "Congress would have expressed [a] purpose [to confer jurisdiction] in altogether different words" than these, id., at 303, which had "the same generality and natural import as did those in the earlier bank act [in Deveaux]," id., at 304 (emphasis added). Considered in their context of a listing of corporate powers, these words established that
"Congress was not then concerned with the jurisdiction of courts but with the faculties and powers of the corporation which it was creating; and evidently all that was intended was to render this corporation capable of suing and being sued by its corporate name in any court of law or equity—Federal, state, or territorial—whose jurisdiction as otherwise competently defined was adequate to the occasion." Id., at 303 (emphasis added).
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