678
Thomas, J., dissenting
A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3654, pp. 194-199 (1985).3 The same is true of the SAA's service requirement. While service of process in a case between private parties may generally be understood to be "a matter discrete from a court's jurisdiction to adjudicate a controversy of a particular kind," ante, at 671, a waiver of sovereign immunity conditioned upon a particular method of service would transform what is ordinarily a nonjurisdictional rule into a jurisdictional one.4
Once the majority concludes that Congress attached no particular significance to the SAA's requirement that process be served forthwith, the conclusion that Rule 4( j), by operation of the Rules Enabling Act, displaces § 2's service requirement would appear to flow naturally. But that is not the case. As the Government concedes, the Rules Enabling
3 Although we held in Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U. S. 89, 95-96 (1990), that statutes of limitations in cases brought against the Government are presumptively subject to equitable tolling, we also reaffirmed in that case that a time restriction on suit against the United States "is a condition to the waiver of sovereign immunity and thus must be strictly construed." Id., at 94. Irwin did mark a departure from our earlier, and stricter, treatment of statutes of limitations in the sovereign immunity context, but our decision in United States v. Williams, 514 U. S. 527 (1995), makes clear that statutes of limitations in suits brought against the United States are no less jurisdictional prerequisites than they were before Irwin. Williams confirmed that a statute of limitations "narrow[s] the waiver of sovereign immunity," 514 U. S., at 534, n. 7, and cited for this proposition United States v. Dalm, 494 U. S. 596 (1990), which held that failure to file a claim against the Government for a federal tax refund within the statute of limitations operates as a jurisdictional bar to suit.
4 I recognize that, under my reading of the Act, jurisdiction in an SAA suit may turn upon the plaintiff's use of registered mail, which is also specified in the sentence of § 2 that requires process to be served forthwith. 46 U. S. C. App. § 742. Though this may seem like an odd requirement from our modern perspective, the most sensible textual reading of the Act is still that Congress sought to impose a specific method of service in SAA cases without regard to the rules governing service generally. Congress is free to amend the statute if it determines that the SAA has fallen out of date with modern mailing practices.
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