176
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
169, 171-174.1 The bare words of §§ 1331, 1332, and 1367(a) permit the Court's construction. For the reasons advanced in this opinion, however, I do not construe these prescriptions, on allocation of judicial business to federal courts of first instance, to embrace the category of appellate business at issue here.
The Court's expansive reading, in my judgment, takes us far from anything Congress conceivably could have meant. Cf. Lynch v. Overholser, 369 U. S. 705, 710 (1962) ("The decisions of this Court have repeatedly warned against the dangers of an approach to statutory construction which confines itself to the bare words of a statute, for 'literalness may strangle meaning.' ") (citations omitted). Cross-system appeals, if they are to be introduced into our federal system, should stem from the National Legislature's considered and explicit decision. In accord with the views of the large majority of federal judges who have considered the question, I would hold the cross-system appeal unauthorized by Congress, and affirm the Seventh Circuit's judgment.
I
Until now it has been taken almost for granted that federal courts of first instance lack authority under §§ 1331 and 1332 to displace state courts as forums for on-the-record review of state and local agency actions. In Chicago, R. I. & P. R. Co. v. Stude, 346 U. S. 574 (1954), we recalled the historic understanding: A federal district court "does not sit to review on appeal action taken administratively or judicially in
1 The Court assumes, although § 1367 does not expressly so provide, that the section covers cases originating in a state court and removed to a federal court. Ante, at 165. Although the point has not been briefed, I do not question that assumption. See Steinman, Supplemental Jurisdiction in § 1441 Removed Cases: An Unsurveyed Frontier of Congress' Handiwork, 35 Ariz. L. Rev. 305, 308-310 (1993) (observing that arguments against application of § 1367 to removed cases "are weak").
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