Court Opinion

ID: 9420355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:54:05.999042+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:24.367530
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rutledge,
with whom
Mr. Justice Murpht agrees, concurring.
I join in the Court’s judgment. But I strongly dissent from the reasons assigned to support it in the opinion of Mr. Justice Jackson.
While giving lip service to the venerable decision in Hepburn & Dundas v. Ellzey, 2 Cranch 445, and purporting to distinguish it, that opinion ignores nearly a century and a half of subsequent consistent construction.1 In all practical consequence, it would overrule that decision with its later reaffirmations. Pertinently it may be asked, how and where are those decisions to operate, if not just in the situation presented by this case? And, if there is no other, would they not be effectively overruled?
What is far worse and more important, the manner in which this reversal would be made, if adhered to by a majority of the Court, would entangle every district court of the United States for the first time in all of the contradictions, complexities and subtleties which have *605surrounded the courts of the District of Columbia in the maze woven by the “legislative court — constitutional court” controversy running through this Court’s decisions concerning them.2
In my opinion it would be better to continue following what I conceive to be the original error of the Hepburn decision and its progeny than thus to ensnarl the general. system of federal courts. Jurisdictional and doctrinal troubles enough we have concerning them without adding others by ruling now that they have the Origin and jurisdiction of “legislative” courts in addition to that of “constitutional” courts created under Article III, with which alone they heretofore have been held endowed.
Moreover, however this case may be decided, there is ño real escape from deciding what the word “State” as used in Article III, § 2 of the Constitution means. For if it is a limitation on Congress’ power as to courts created under that Article, it is hard to see how it becomes no limitation when Congress decides to cast it off under some other Article,, even one relating to its authority over the District of Columbia. If this may be done in the name of practical convenience and dual authority, or bécause Congress might find some other constitutional way to make citizens of the District suable elsewhere .or to bring here for suit citizens from any part of the country, then what is a limitation imposed on the federal courts generally is none when Congress decides to disregard it by purporting to act under some other authorization.
The Constitution is not so self-contradictory. Nor are its limitations to be so easily evaded. The very essence of- the problem is whether the Constitution meant to. cut out from the diversity jurisdiction of courts created under Article III suits brought by or agaiñst citizens of the *606District of Columbia. That question is not answered by saying in one breath that it did and in the next that it did not.
I.
Prior to enactment of the 1940 statute today considered, federal courts of the District of Columbia were the only federal courts which had jurisdiction to try nonfederal civil actions between citizens of the District and citizens of the several states. The doors of federal courts in every state, open to suits between parties of diverse state citizenship by virtue of Article III, § 2 (as implemented by continuous congressional enactment), were closed to citizens of the District of Columbia. The 1940 statute was Congress’ first express attempt to remedy the inequality which has obtained ever since Chief Justice Marshall, in Hepburn & Dundas v. Ellzey, supra, construed the first Judiciary Act to exclude citizens of the District of Columbia. Marshall’s construction of the 1789 statute was founded on his conclusion that the comparable language of the diversity clause in Article III, § 2 — “Citizens of different, States” — did not embrace citizens of the District.
Marshall’s view of the 1789 Act, iterated in his later dictum, New Orleans v. Winter, 1 Wheat. 91, 94; cf. Sere v. Pitot, 6 Cranch 332, 336, has been consistently adhered to in judicial interpretation of later congressional grants of jurisdiction.3 And, by accretion, the rule of the Hepburn case has acquired the force of a considered determination that, within the meaning of Article III, § 2, “the District of Columbia is not a State” 4 and its citizens are therefore not citizens of any state within that Article’s meaning.
*607The opinion of Mb. Justice Jackson in words “reaffirms” this view of the diversity clause. -Nevertheless, faced with an explicit congressional command to extend jurisdiction in nonfederal cases to the citizens of the District of Columbia, it finds that Congress has power to add to the Article III jurisdiction of federal district- courts such further jurisdiction as Congress may think “necessary and proper,” Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 18, to implement its power of “exclusive Legislation,” Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 17, over the 'District of Columbia; and thereby to escape from the limitations of Article III.
From this reasoning I dissent. For I think that the. Article III courts in the several states cannot be vested, by virtue of other provisions of the Constitution, , with powers specifically denied them by the terms of Article III. If we accept the elementary doctrine that the words of Article III are not self-exercising grants of jurisdiction to the inferior federal courts,5 then I think those words must mark the limits of the power Congress may confer on the district courts in the several states. And I do not think we or Congress can override those limits through invocation of Article I without making the Constitution a self-contradicting instrument. If Marshall correctly read Article III as preventing Congress from unlocking *608the courthouse door to citizens of the District, it seems past belief that Article I was designed to enable Congress to pick the lock. For the diversity jurisdiction here thus sustained is identical in all respects with the diversity jurisdiction thought to be closed to District citizens by Article III: It is justice administered in the same courtroom and under the supervision of the same judge; it is, presumptively, justice fashioned by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure arid, now, under the aegis of Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins.6 The jurisdiction today thus upheld is not simply an expurgated version of a banned original; it is the real thing.
To circumvent the limits of Article III, it is said, after finding a contrary and overriding intent in Article I, that Article III district courts in the several states can also be vested with jurisdiction springing from Article I. The only express holding which conceivably could lend comfort to this doctrine of dual jurisdiction is this Court’s conclusion in O’Donoghue v. United States, 289 U. S. 516, that certain courts of the District of Columbia, theretofore deemed legislative courts created under Article I,7 owe their jurisdiction to Article I and *609Article III. With the merits of' the O’Donoghue decision in holding that Article III barred salary reductions for judges of the courts in question, we are not presently concerned. Suffice it to point out that the express language of the O’Donoghue decision negatives the view that federal courts in the several states share this hybrid heritage:
“. . . Congiess derives from the District clause distinct powers in respect of the constitutional courts of the District which Congress does not possess in respect of such courts outside the District.” 8
The limits of the O’Donoghue decision are only underscored by the dissenting view of Chief Justice Hughes and Justices Van Devanter and Cardozo that all District of Columbia courts are solely the creatures of Article I:
“As the courts of the District do not rest for their creation on § 1 of Article III, their creation is not subject to any of the limitations of that provision. Nor would those limitations, if considered to be applicable, be susceptible of division so that some might be deemed obligatory and others might be ignored.” 289 U. S. at 552.
Comfort is sought to be drawn, however, from this Court’s rationale in Williams v. United States, 289 U. S. 553, which, in sanctioning salary reductions for judges of the Court óf Claims, held that that court did not derive its jurisdiction from Article III. That conclusion stemmed in part from the proposition that suits against the United States are not “Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party,” within the meaning of Article III,- § 2. Hence, it is said, the permissible inference is that the long-established concurrent jurisdiction of district courts over claims against the United States *610is likewise not derived from Article III.9 We need not today determine the nature of district court jurisdiction of suits against the United States. Suffice it to say that, if such suits are not “Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party,” they are presumptively within the purview of the federal-question jurisdiction to which Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s opinion directs our attention — the Article III, § 2 grant of power over “Cases . . . arising under . . . the Laws of the United States.” This is, at least, the conventional view of district court jurisdiction under the Tucker Act. 2 Moore, Federal Practice (2d ed., 1948) 1633.
But, in any event, to rely on Williams as dispositive of the present case is to rely on a bending reed: Williams and O’Donoghue were companion cases, argued together and decided together; and the opinions were written by the same Justice. Accordingly, what was said in one must be read in the light of what was said in the other. O’Donoghue, as has been observed, expressly rejected the proposition today announced — that Congress can vest in constitutional courts outside the District of Columbia jurisdiction derived from the District clause of Article I.
But O’Donoghue wrent further, and in so doing undermined any implication in Williams that Article III courts outside the District could be vested with any form of non-Article III jurisdiction, when it pointed out that no courts of the District of Columbia could be granted “administrative and other jurisdiction,” if, “in creating and defining the jurisdiction of the courts of the District, Congress were limited to Art. Ill, as it is in dealing with the other federal courts . . . .” 289 U. S. at 546. Moreover, the Justices who dissented from the O’Donoghue rationale of dual jurisdiction expressed no disagreement with the Williams opinion. In these circumstances, cer*611tainly no more strength can be drawn from the language of a case upholding salary reductions for one group of judges than from the holding in a case striking down salary reductions for another group of judges.
Nor is there merit in the view that the bankruptcy jurisdiction of district courts does not stem from Article III. Of course it is true that Article I is the source of congressional power over bankruptcy, as it is the source of congressional power over interstate commerce, taxa? tion, the coining of money, and other powers confided by the states to the exclusive exercise of the national legislature. But, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s opinion makes clear, federal court adjudication of disputes arising pursuant to bankruptcy and other legislation is conventional federal-question jurisdiction. And no case cited in any of today’s opinions remotely suggests the contrary.
Furthermore, no. case cited supports the view that jurisdiction over' a suit to collect estate assets under § 23. (b) of the Bankruptcy Act, brought by the trustee in a district court with the “consent” of the defendant, is a departure from the general rule and is derived from Article I alone. To be sure, although this Court indicated a contrary view in the early case of Lovell v. Newman & Son, 227 U. S. 412, 426, Chief Justice Hughes’ opinion in Schumacher v. Beeler, 293 U. S. 367, made it perfectly clear that district courts can, with the consént of the proposed defendant, -entertain trustee suits under. § 23 (b) which the bankrupt, but for the Bankruptcy Act, could not have prosecuted in a federal court absent diversity or some independent federal question “arising, under.. . . the Laws of the United States.” ■ The opinion, stated:
“Conflicting views have been held of the meaning of the provision for consent in 123(b). In one view, the provision relates merely to venue, that is, only to a consent to the 'local jurisdiction.’ . . . *612The opposing view was set forth by the court below in Toledo Fence & Post Co. v. Lyons, 290 Fed. 637, 645, and that decision was followed in the instant case. ... It proceeds upon the ground that the Congress had power to permit suits by trustees in bankruptcy in the federal courts against adverse claimants, regardless of diversity of citizenship, and that by § 23 (b) the Congress intended that the federal courts should have that jurisdiction in cases where the defendant gave consent,' and, without that consent, in cases which fell within the stated exceptions.
“We think that the latter view is the correct one.” 293 U. S. at 371.
Chief Justice Hughes’ opinion does not intimate that this “consent jurisdiction” arises solely from Article I. Quite the contrary, the opinion by Judge Denison outlining the “view” which the Chief Justice described as “the correct one” expressly stated that such suits are a segment of the district court’s federal-question jurisdiction:
“The trustee must allege and prove that valid proceedings were taken under the Bankruptcy Act, leading to a valid adjudication, whereby title passed, and that by valid proceedings under the act he was chosen as trustee. If the proof fails in any of these particulars, the suit fails. The suit is one step in the collection of assets in the execution of the Bankruptcy Act. That such a case would be one 'arising under the laws of the United States’ we think is the result of well-settled principles. It will be observed that under the constitutional limitations of the federal judicial power (article 3, sec. 2), and with exceptions not to this question important, Congress has no power to confer jurisdiction on the inferior federal courts excepting as to suits which do so arise; and every decision which upholds the right to sue in the *613federal court by one who merely acquires title through the operation of a federal law is therefore, by necessary implication, a holding that such a suit ‘arises under’ federal laws.” Toledo Fence & Post Co. v. Lyons, 290 F. 637, 641; and cf. Beeler v. Schumacher, 71 F. 2d 831, 833.
There seems no reason therefore to suppose that this Court, in holding “correct” the view that district courts have jurisdiction over a trustee suit which could not have been brought by the bankrupt, rejected the explicit Article III basis of that jurisdiction.
And neither reliance on Gully v. First National Bank, 299 U. S. 109; Puerto Rico v. Russell & Co., 288 U. S. 476, and related cases, nor the suggestion that “a suit arises under the law that creates the cause of action,” American Well Works v. Layne, 241 U. S. 257, 260, compels the conclusion that Congress could not and did not classify § 23 (b) suits to collect estate assets as federal-question cases arising under the Bankruptcy Act. As this Court has had occasion to observe, a “ ‘cause of action’ may mean one thing for one purpose and something different for another.” United States v. Memphis Cotton Oil Co., 288 U. S. 62, 67-68; and see Gully v. First National Bank, supra, at 117. Similarly, as students of federal jurisdiction have taken pains to point out, the “substantial identity of the words” in the constitutional and statutory grants of federal-question juris-' diction, “does not, of course, require, on that score alone, an identical interpretation.” Shulman and Jaegerman, Some Jurisdictional Limitations on Federal Procedure, 45 Yale L. J. 393, 405, n. 47 (1936). Confusion of the two is a natural, but not an insurmountable, hazard. The Gully and Puerto Rico cases were concerned with the general statutory grant to district courts of jurisdiction over federal questions; they were not concerned with the constitutional grant of jurisdiction, nor with the specific *614statutory grant of jurisdiction found in the Bankruptcy Act and approved in Schumacher v. Beeler, supra.
It has never heretofore been doubted that the constitutional grant of power is broader than the general federal-question jurisdiction - which Congress has from time to time thought to confer on • district courts by statute. In one "of the federal land-grant cases relied on in Mr. Justice Jackson's opinion, this Court had occasion to make this distinction clear:
“By the Constitution (art. 3, sec. 2)’ the judicial power of-the United States extends ‘to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States’ and to controversies ‘between citizens of different -States.’ By article 4, s. 3, cl. 2, Congress is given ‘power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.’ Under these clauses Congress might doubtless provide that any controversy of a judicial nature arising in or growing out of the disposal of the public lands should be litigated only in the . courts of the United States. The question, therefore, is not one of the power of Congress, but of its intent. It has so constructed the judicial system of the United States, that the great bulk of litigation respecting rights of property, although those rights may in their inception go back to some law of the United States, is in fact carried on in the courts of the several States.” Shoshone Mining Company v. Rutter, 177 U. S. 505, 506.
Indeed, were we to adopt the "view that the Gully rule is a test applicable to the constitutional phrase, we would effectively repudiate Chief Justice Marshall’s conclusion in Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheat. 738, that Congress can allow a federally chartered coriporation to bring all its litigation into federal courts *615for the reason that, solely by virtue of the corporation’s federal' origin, all suits to which the corporation is a party are suits “arising under . . . the Laws of the' United States” within the meaning of Article III. The rule, of the Bank of the United States case, reiterated in The Pacific Railroad Removal Cases, 115 U. S. 1; Matter of Dunn, 212 U. S. 374; American Bank & Trust Co. v. Federal Bank, 256 U. S. 350; Sowell v. Federal Reserve Bank, 268 U. S. 449; and Federal Bank v. Mitchell, 277 U. S. 213, has been limited by statute but never by subsequent constitutional construction. The survival of the rule was acknowledged by. Mr. Justice Stone in. Puerto Rico v. Russell & Co., supra at 485, and by Mr. Justice Cardozo in Gully v. First National Bank, supra, at 114.
In short, Congress has at no time conferred on federal district courts original jurisdiction over all federal questions, preferring to leave trial of many and perháps most such questions, to state adjudication, subject to the ultimate review of this Court. But exceptions to the congressional policy of limitation there have been, and one of these is the trustee suit under § 23 (b). 2 Moore, Federal Practice (2d ed., 1948) 1633.
Thus I see no warrant for gymnastic éxpansion of the jurisdiction of federal courts outside the District. At least as to these latter courts sitting in the states, I have thought it plain that Article III described and defined their “judicial Power,” and that where “power proposed to be conferred . ; . was not judicial power within the meaning of the Constitution . . . [it] was, therefore, unconstitutional, and could not lawfully be exercised by the courts.” 10
*616If Article III were no longer to serve as the criterion of district court jurisdiction, I should be at a loss to understand what tasks, within the constitutional competence of Congress, might not be assigned to district courts. At all events, intimations that district courts could only undertake the determination of “justiciable” controversies seem inappropriate, since the very clause of Article I today relied on has long been regarded as the source of the “legislative,” Keller v. Potomac Electric Co., 261 U. S. 428, and “administrative,” Postum Cereal Co. v. California Fig Nut Co., 272 U. S. 693, powers of the courts of the District of Columbia. Moreover, the suggestion that the Constitutional Convention recognized. a constructive limitation of federal jurisdiction to “cases of a Judiciary nature,” II Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention 430-431, merely lays bare the ultimate fallacy underlying rejection of the boundaries of Article III. For the constructive limitation referred to in > the Convention debates is a limitation imposed by Article III, and the opinion of Mr. Justice Jackson by hypothesis denies that Article III expresses the full measure of power which can be delegated to federal district courts. If district courts are — as I agree they are — confined to “cases of a Judiciary nature,” then too they are confined to cases “between Citizens of different States," except insofar as other Article III provisions expand the potentiál. grant of jurisdiction. For — to borrow the words of the O’Donoghue dissent — the limitations of Article III, “if considered to be applicable, [would not] be susceptible of division so that some might be deemed obligatory and others might be ignored.” 289 U. S. at 552.
In view of the rationale adopted by Mr. Justice Jackson’s opinion, I do not understand the necessity for its examination of the limits of the diversity clause of Article III. That opinion has, however, made clear the •view that the diversity clause excludes citizens of the *617District of Columbia, although where that view may now be applied it boefemot point out. If I concurred in that conception of the diversity clause I would vote to affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
II.
However, nothing but naked precedent, the great age of the Hepburn ruling, and the prestige of Marshall’s name, supports such a result. It is doubtful whether anyone could be found who now would write into the Constitution such an unjust and discriminatory exclusion of District citizens from the federal courts. ■ All of the reasons of justice, convenience, and practicality which have been set forth for allowing District citizens a furtive access to federal courts, point to the conclusion that they should enter freely and fully as other citizens and even aliens do.
Precedent of course is not lightly to be disregarded, even in the greater fluidity of decision which the process of constitutional adjudication concededly affords.11 And *618Marshall’s'sponsorship in such matters always is weighty. But when long experience has disclosed the fallacy of a. ruling, time has shown its injustice,’ and nothing remains but a technicality the only effect of which is to perpetuate inequity, hardship and wrong, those are the circumstances which this Court repeatedly has said call for reexamination of prior decisiqns. If those conditions are fulfilled in any case, they are in this one.
The Hepburn decision was made before time, through later decisions here, had destroyed its basic premise and at the beginning of Marshall’s judicial career, when he had hardly started upon his-great work, of expounding the Constitution. The very brevity of the opinion and its groundings, especially in their ambiguity, show that the. master hand which latér made his work immortal faltered.12
*619The sole reason Marshall assigned for the decision was “a conviction that the members of the American confederacy only are the states contemplated in the constitution,” a conviction resulting as he said from an examination of the use of that word in the charter to determine “whether Columbia is a state in the sensé of that instrument.” 2 Cranch at 452. “When the same term which has been used plainly , in this limited sense [as designating a member of the union] in the articles respecting the legislative and executive departments, is also employed in that which respects the judicial department, it must be understood as retaining the sense originally given to it.” Ibid.
This narrow and literal reading was grounded exclusively on three constitutional provisions: the requirements that members of the House of Representatives be chosen by the people of the several states; that the Senate shall be composed of two Sénátors from each state; and that each state “shall appoint, for the .election of the executive,” the specified number of electors; all, be it noted, provisions relating to the organization and struc- ‘ ture of the political departments of the government, not to the civil rights of citizens as such. Put to one side were other provisions advanced in argument as showing “that the term state is sometimes used in its more enlarged sense” on the ground that “they do not prove what was to be shown by them.” Ibid. But cf; 446^-448, 450.
Whether or not this answer was adequate at the time,13 *620our Constitution- today would be very different from what it is if .such a narrow and literal construction of each of its terms had been transmuted into an inflexible rule of constitutional interpretation. It is to be remembered, as bearing on the very issue before us, that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of “an impartial jury of the State . . . wherein the crime shall have been committed” extends to criminal prosecutions in the Nation’s capital.14 Similarly, the word “Citizens” has a broader *621meaning in Article III, § 2, where it now includes corporations,15 than it has in the privileges and immunities clause of Article IV, § 2,16 or in the like clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.17 Instances might, but need not, be multiplied.
In construing the diversity clause we are faced with the apparent fact that the Framers gave no deliberate consideration one way or another to the diversity litigation of citizens of the District of Columbia. And indeed, since the District was not in existence when the *622Constitution was drafted, it seems in no way surprising that the Framers, after conferring on Congress plenary power over the future federal capital, made no express provision for litigating outside the boundaries of a hypothetical city conjectured controversies between unborn citizens and their unknown neighbors. Under these circumstances I cannot accept the proposition that absence of affirmative inclusion is, here, tantamount to deliberate exclusion.
If exclusion of District citizens is not compelled by the language of the diversity clause, it likewise cannot be spelled out by inference from the historic purposes of that clause. We have, needless to say, no concern with the merits of diversity jurisdiction;18 nor need we resolve scholarly dispute over the Substantiality of. those local prejudices which, when the Constitution was drafted, the grant of diversity jurisdiction was designed to nullify.19 Our only duty is to determine the scope of the jurisdictional grant, and we must bow to congressional determination of whether federal adjudication of local issues does more good than harm. But, in resolving the imme-*623diate issue, we should not blink the fact that, whatever the need for federal jurisdiction over kuits between liti-gant citizens of the several states, the sájne need equally-compels the safeguards of federal trial for suits brought by citizens of the District of Columbia against citizens of the several states. Conversely, if we assume that today’s ruling tacitly validates suits brought by state citizens against citizens of the District of Columbia, it would seem the plaintiff citizen of a state is as'deserying of a federal forum when suing a District defendant as when suing a defendant in a neighbor state.
Marshall’s sole premise of decision in the Hepburn case has failed, under the stress of time _ancL.later decision, ¿s a test of constitutional construction. Key words like “state,” “citizen,” and “person” do not always and invariably mean the same thing.20 His literal application disregarded any possible distinction between the purely political clauses and those affecting civil rights of citizens, a distinction later to receive recognition.
Moreover, Marshall himself recognized the incongruity of the decision: “It is true that as citizens of the United-States, and of that particular district which is subject to the jurisdiction of congress, it is extraordinary that the courts of the United States, which , are open to aliens^ and to the citizens of every state in the union, should be closed upon them.” But, he added, “this is a subject for legislative not for judicial consideration.” 2 Cranch at 453.
With all this we may well agree, with one reservation. In spite of subsequent contrary interpretation and Mar-, shall’s own identification of the statutory word “state"” with the same word in the Constitution, we cannot be unreservedly sure that the last-quoted sentence referred to the process of constitutional amendment rather than *624congressional reconsideration. If the former had been the intent, it seems likely it would have been stated in words not so characteristic of the latter process. The Court was construing the statute,21 which made no explicit inclusion of citizens of the District. Whéther, if it had done so, the Courtis ruling would have been the same or, if a later act had sought to include District citizens, it would have been held unconstitutional, we can only speculate.
But I do not rest on this ambiguity, more especially in view of the later decisions clearly accepting the Hepburn decision as one of constitutional import. On the other hand, the later and general repudiation of the decision’s narrow and literal rule for construing the Constitution, in which Marshall’s own part was not small, has cut from beneath the Hepburn case its only grounding and with it, in my judgment, the anomaly in result which the ruling always has been. It is perhaps unnecessary to go so far in criticizing the decision as was done by a judge who long afterwards bowed to it.22 But the time has come *625when the hope he expressed for removing this highly unjust discrimination from a group of our citizens larger than the population of several states of the Union should be realized.
III.
Pragmatically stated, perhaps, the problem is not of earth-shaking proportions. For, by present hypothesis, federal court disposition of diversity suits must be in accord with local law in all matters of substance. But symbolically the matter is of very considerable importance. Reasonable men may differ perhaps over whether or, more appropriately, to what extent citizens of the District should have political status and equality with their fellow citizens. But with reference to their civil rights, especially in such a matter as equal access to the federal courts, none now can be found to defend discrimination against them save strictly on the ground of precedent.
I cannot believe that the Framers intended to impose so purposeless and indefensible .a discrimination, although they may have been guilty of understandable oversight in not providing explicitly against it. Despite its great age and subsequent acceptance, I think the Hepburn decision was ill-considered and wrongly decided. Nothing hangs on it now except the continuance or removal of a gross and wholly anomalous inequality applied against a substantial group of American citizens, not in relation to their substantive rights, but in respect to the forums available for their determination. This Court has not *626hesitated toxoverride even long-standing decisions when much more by way of substantial change was involved and the action taken was much less clearly justified than in this case, a most pertinent instance being Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, supra.
That course should be followed here. It should be followed directly, not deviously. Although I agree with the Court’s judgment, I think it overrules the Hepburn decision in, all practical effect. "With that I am in accord. But I am not in. accord with the proposed extension of “legislative'* jurisdiction under Article I for the first time to the federal district courts outside the District of Columbia organized pursuant to Article III, and the consequent impairment of the latter Article’s limitations upon judicial power; and I would dissent from such a holding even more strongly than I wuuld from a decision today reaffirming the Hepburn ruling. That extension, in my opinion, would be the most important part of today’s decision, were it accepted by a majority of the Court. It is a dangerous doctrine which would return to plague both the district courts and ourselves in the future, to whát extent it is impossible to say. The O’Donoghue and Williams decisions would then take on an importance they have never before had and were never, considered likely to attain.^

 See notes 3 and 4 and text infra.

 See text infra and authorities cited at notes 7-9.

 Barney v. Baltimore, 6 Wall, 280; Hooe v. Jamieson, 166 U. S. 395; Hooe v. Werner, 166 U. S. 399.

 Hooe v. Jamieson, 166 U. S. 395, 397; cf. Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244, 270.

 “Of all the Courts which the United States may, under their general powers, constitute, one only, the Supreme Court, possesses jurisdiction derived immediately from the constitution, and of which the legislative power cannot deprive it.” United States v. Hudson, 7 Cranch 32, 33. And see Justice Chase’s remarks in Turner v. Bank of North America, 4 Dall. 8, 10 n. 1. But cf. Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304, 328-331. For recent reaffirmation of the prevailing view see Kline v. Burke Construction Co., 260 U. S. 226, 233-234. And see the comprehensive survey of congressional power over' the jurisdiction of federal courts prepared for the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives by Mr. Justice Frankfurter before his accession to this bench. F R. Rep. No. 669, 72d Cong., 1st Sess. 12-14

 304 U. S. 64. If it were assumed that the Constitution requires the application of local law in traditional diversity suits (cf. id. at 77-80; Black & White Taxicab Co. v. Brown & Yellow Taxicab Co., 276 U. S. 518, dissenting opinion at 533; but cf. Cohen v. Industrial Loan Corp., post at 541, dissenting opinion at 557), it may be wondered whether that requirement would also govern the rationale of jurisdiction today advanced: Under this rationale, Congress might well find in Article I power, to authorize articulation of a body of federal substantive law for the decision of diversity cases involving citizens of the District of Columbia.

 Federal Radio Commission v. General Electric Co., 281 U. S. 464; Postum Cereal Co. v. California Fig Nut Co., 272 U. S. 693; Keller v. Potomac Electric Co., 261 U. S. 428. Cf. Ex parte Bakelite Corp., 279 U. S. 438, 450; Federal Radio Commission v. Nelson Bros., 289 U. S. 266, 274-276; United States v. Jones, 336 U. S. 641, 652, n. 12.

 O’Donoghue v. United States, 289 U. S. 516, 551. Cf. Pitts v. Peak, 60 App. D. C. 195, 197.

 See Comments, 43 Yale L. J. 316, ,319' (1933).

 Note by Chief Justice Taney inserted by order of the Court after the' opinion in United States v. Ferreira, 13 How. 40, 53, summarizing the Court’s conclusions in Haybum’s Case, 2 Dall. 409, and United States v. Yale Todd, decided without opinion by this Court on February 17/1794, and apparently unreported. .

 Cf. Screws v. United States, 325 U. S. 91, 112-113. See the trenchant discussion by Mr. Justice Brandéis of the lesser impact of stare decisis in the realm of constitutional construction, Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 405-410 (dissenting opinion), and the views of Mr. Justice Frankfurter dissenting in Commissioner v. Estate of Church, 335 U. S. 632, 676-677. Instances in which this Court has overruled prior constitutional determinations are catalogued in Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., supra at 407, n. 2, 409, n. 4, and in Helvering v. Griffiths, 318 U. S. 371, 401, n. 52; compare Mr. Justice Brandéis’ compilations in Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., supra at 406, n. 1, and in .his dissenting opinion in Washington v. Dawson & Co., 264 U. S. 219, 238, n. 21. Chief Justice'Stone, speaking for the Court on the death of Mr. Justice Brandéis, took occasion to note the prime role played by the' latter in liberating the Court from mechanical adherence to- precedent where constitutional issues are at stake: “He never lost sight of the fact that the Constitution Is primarily a great charter of government, and often repeated Marshall,s words: ‘it is a constitution we are expounding’ ‘intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises *618of human affairs.’ Hence, its provisions were to be read not with thé narrow .literalism of a municipal code or a penal statute, but so that its high purposes should illumine every sentence and phrase of the document and be given effect as a part of a harmonious framework of government. Notwithstanding the doctrine of stare decisis, judicial interpretations of the Constitution, since they were beyond legislative correction, could not be taken'as the final word. They were open to reconsideration, in the light of new experience and greater knowledge and wisdom.” 317 U. S. xlii, xlvii.

 The Hepburn case was not the only one in those earlier years where the master touch was lacking; Cf. Bank of the United States v. Deveaux, 5 Cranch 61; Hope Insurance Co. v. Boardman, 5 Cranch 57; Maryland Insurance Co. v. Woods, 6 Cranch 29, 7 Cranch 402; McGovney, A Supreme Court Fiction, 56 Harv. L. Rev. 853, 863-885 (1943). See particularly the discussion at 876-883. By positing the capacity of a corporation to sue or be sued under the (iiversity clause on the citizenship of its shareholders, the •Deveaux decision opened the way for corporations ultimately' to be brought within the diversity jurisdiction, but only by the long and tortuous evolution of the law through the stages first of rebut-table and finally of conclusive presumption (now most) often contrary to the fact) that’ all the shareholders are citizens of the state of incorporation. See Louisville, C. & C. R. Co. v. Letson, 2 How. 497.

 Counsel for the plaintiffs had made,-among others, two different,though closely related, arguments. One was that “state” as used in the diversity clause should be given what -Marshall characterized as “the signification attached to it by writers 'on the law of nations,” a political'entity in a broad and general sense. To this argument his answer was obviously appropriate. But in view of other constitutional provisions relied upon in the argument, 2 Cranch 446-448, 450, it seems-at least questionable that the answer met the other contention, namely, that “those territories which are under the exclu*620sive government of the United States are to be considered in some respects as included in the term ‘states’ as used in the constitution.” Id. at 446.

 The Court’s initial determination that District residents were entitled to a jury trial in criminal cases, Callan v. Wilson, 127 U. S. 540, rested in large measure on the more inclusive language of Article III, § 2: “The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.” The Court in the Callan case rejected the Government’s argument that Article III, § 2, permits Congress to dispense with a jury when the crime takes place in the District rather than in a state. But Article III does not seem to have been the sole basis of decision, for the Court said, 127 U. S. at 550: “In Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 145, 154, it was taken for granted that the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution secured to the people of the Territories the right of trial by jury in criminal prosecutions; . . . We cannot think that the people of this District have, in that regard, less rights than those accorded to the people of the Territories of the United States.” See District of Columbia v. Clawans, 300 U. S. 617, 624; Capital Traction Co. v. Hof, 174 U. S. 1, 5; cf. Thompson v. Utah, 170 U. S. 343, 348-349.
But, though it be true that “The Sixth Amendment was not needed to require trial by jury in cases of crimes,” United States v. Wood, 299 U. S. 123, 142, nevertheless the recognized right of District residents to an “impartial jury" is conferred by the force of the Sixth Amendment. See Frazier v. United States, 335 U. S. 497, 498, 514. Nor is this distinction a mere form of words: In United States v. Wood, supra, at 142-143, Chief Justice Hughes, in weighing the impartiality of a District of Columbia jury, noted the Article III *621guarantee of a jury trial and then observed: “The Sixth Amendment provided further assurances. It added that in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right ‘to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.’ ”
Thus it has been uniformly assumed that in criminal prosecutions a resident of the District of Columbia is possessed of Sixth Amendment rights “to a speedy . . . trial,” United States v. McWilliams, 69 F. Supp. 812, affirmed 163 F. 2d 695; “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation,” cf. Johnson v. United States, 225 U. S. 405, 409, 411; “to be confronted with the witnesses against him,” Curtis v. Rives, 123 F. 2d 936, 937; Jordon v. Bondy, 114 F. 2d 599, 602, “to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor,” ibid.; “and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence,” Noble v. Eicher, 143 F. 2d 1001; see Williams v. Huff, 142 F. 2d 91, 146 F. 2d 867.

 See note 12 supra. Compare Louisville, C. & C. R. Co. v. Letson, 2 How. 497, with Bank of the United States v. Deveaux, 5 Cranch 61.

 Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168, 177. It is to be noted, however, that Hamilton’s 80th Federalist expressly justified the grant of diversity jurisdiction as effectively implementing the guaranties of the privileges and immunities clause of Article IV.

 Hague v. C. I. O., 307 U. S. 496, 514, cf. id. at 527; Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233, 244; Orient Insurance Company v. Daggs, 172 U. S. 557, 561.

 For contrasting views prior to Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64, compare Yntema, The Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts in Controversies between Citizens of Different States, 19 A. B. A. J. 71 (1933), and Yntema and Jaffin, Preliminary Analysis of Concurrent Jurisdiction,.79 U. Pa. L. Rev. 869 (1931), with Frankfurter, A Note on Diversity Jurisdiction — In Reply to Professor Yntema, 79 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1097 (1931), and Frankfurter, Distribution of Judicial Power between United States and State Courts, 13 Corn. L. Q. 499, 520-§30 (1928). For post-Fne analyses see Shulman, The Demise of Swift v. Tyson, 47 Yale L.'. J. 1336 (1938); Clark, State Law in the Federal Courts: The Brooding Omnipresence of Erie v. Tompkins, 55 Yale L. J. 267 (1946).

 See note 18, and see also Friendly, The Historic Basis of Diversity Jurisdiction, 41 Harv. L. Rev, 483 (1928); Warren, New Light on the History of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789, 37 Harv. L. Rev. 49, 81-90 (1923); Frank, Historical Bases of the Federal Judicial System, 13 Law & Contem. Prob. 3,22-28 (1948).

 Cf. notes 14-17 supra and text.

 The arguments for the defendant were two, one statutory, the other constitutional. They were stated as follows: “Even if the constitution of the United States authorises a more enlarged jurisdiction than the judiciary act of 1789 has given, yet the court can take no jurisdiction which is not given by the act. . . .
“This is not a case between citizens of different states, within the meaning of the constitution.” 2 Craneh at 449-450.

 After noting that the Hepburn decision had been extended by New Orleans v. Winter, 1 Wheat. 91, to territories and their citizens, the opinion in Watson v. Brooks, 13 F. 540, stated at 543-544: “But it is very doubtful if this ruling would now be made if the question was one of first impression; and it is to be hoped it may yet be reviewed and overthrown.
“By it, and upon a narrow and technical construction of the word ‘state,’ unsupported by any argument worthy of the able and distinguished judge who announced the opinion of the court, the large, and growing population of American citizens resident in the District of Columbia and the eight territories of the United States' are deprived of the privilege accorded to all other' American citizens, as *625well as aliens, of • going into the national courts when obliged to assert or defend their legal rights away- from home. Indeed, in the language of the court in Hepburn v. Ellzey, supra, they may well say: ‘It is extraordinary that the courts of the United States, which are open to aliens, and to the citizens of every state in the Union, should be closed upon them.’ But so long as this ruling remains in force, the judgment of this court must be governed by it.”