182
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
aside an award is thus like any other first instance proceed-ing—it is " 'a suit, not an appeal.' " Id., at 354 (quoting Booth v. Texas Employers' Ins. Assn., 132 Tex. 237, 246, 123 S. W. 2d 322, 328 (1938)).
Remarkably, the Court today asserts that neither Stude nor Horton "suggest[ed] that jurisdiction turned on whether judicial review of the administrative determination was deferential or de novo." Ante, at 170; see also ante, at 171 ("The Court [in Horton] did not purport to hold that the de novo standard was a precondition to federal jurisdiction."). The Court thus casts aside the critical difference between fresh first instance proceedings not tied to a record made by a tribunal lower in the hierarchy, and on-the-record substantial evidence review, which cannot fairly be described as anything but appellate in character.
If, as the Court reasons today, the distinction between de novo and deferential review is inconsequential, then a district court may, indeed must, entertain cross-system, onthe-record appeals from local agency decisions—without regard to the presence or absence of any federal question— whenever the parties meet the diversity-of-citizenship requirement of § 1332. The Court so confirms by noting that, in accord with Califano v. Sanders, 430 U. S. 99, 105-107 (1977), "district courts routinely conduct deferential review [of federal administrative action] pursuant to their original jurisdiction over federal questions." Ante, at 171. Just as routinely, it now appears, district courts must "conduct deferential review [of local administrative action] pursuant to their original jurisdiction over [diversity cases]."
The Court's homogenization of de novo proceedings and appellate review rests on a single case, Califano v. Sanders. In Sanders, the Court settled a longstanding division of opinion over whether § 10 of the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. §§ 701-704, ranked as an independent grant of subject-matter jurisdiction to federal courts, allowing them to review the actions of federal agencies,
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