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1
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0347458690
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note
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Federal diversity jurisdiction is expressly authorized by the Constitution. See U.S. Const, art. III, § 2, cl. 1 ("The judicial Power shall extend . . . to Controversies . . . between Citizens of different States . . . ."). Congress empowered the federal courts with diversity jurisdiction in the first Judiciary Act. See Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20, § 11, 1 Stat. 73, 78 (authorizing the exercise of jurisdiction when the "matter in dispute" exceeded the sum or value of five hundred dollars and either an alien is a party to the suit or the suit is between a citizen of the forum state and a citizen of another state). Although the grant of jurisdiction has been amended from time to time, see Richard H. Fallon, Jr. et al., Hart & Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System 1521-22 (4th ed. 1996), 196 (Supp. 1999) [hereinafter Hart & Wechsler] (describing the historical development of the statutory grant of diversity jurisdiction), it has remained in force to the present, see 28 U.S.C. § 1332 (1994 & Supp. III 1997); see also Erwin Chemerinsky, Federal Jurisdiction § 5.3.2 (2d ed. 1994) (discussing persistence of diversity jurisdiction despite debates about its utility); Charles Alan Wright, Law of Federal Courts § 23 (5th ed. 1994) (same).
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2
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0346827974
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note
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See Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315, 336 (1943) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting): It was believed that, consciously or otherwise, the courts of a state may favor their own citizens. Bias against outsiders may become embedded in a judgment of a state court and yet not be sufficiently apparent to be made the basis of a federal claim. To avoid possible discriminations of this sort, so the theory goes, a citizen of a state other than that in which he is suing or being sued ought to be able to go into a wholly impartial tribunal, namely, the federal court sitting in that state. Accord Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 14 U.S. (1 Wheat.) 304, 347 (1816); Bank of the United States v. Deveaux, 9 U.S. (5 Cranch) 61, 87 (1809). But see Edward A. Purcell, Jr., Litigation and Inequality: Federal Diversity Jurisdiction in Industrial America, 1870-1958, at 127-47, 254-56 (arguing that diversity jurisdiction was designed to favor non-residents who engaged in interstate commerce and that the Supreme Court molded the jurisdictional grant to permit federal courts to hear the types of cases the Court regarded as having national importance); Wright, supra note 1, § 23, at 148 (calling into doubt the.
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