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Close Enough For Government Work: What Happens When Congress Doesn't Do Its Job, Thomas C. Arthur, Richard Freer

Faculty Articles

There's the beef. The supplemental jurisdiction statute, particularly section 1367(b), is a nightmare of draftsmanship. The problems that flow from that fact are more than aesthetic. The sloppiness makes easy cases hard and sows confusion in areas where there should be, and so easily could have been, clarity. It creates that most wasteful type of litigation - fights over jurisdiction. Subject matter jurisdiction rules ought to be clear and capable of near-mechanical application whenever possible. Such pre­cision was possible in the supplemental jurisdiction, if only someone had spent as much time writing the statute as the trio has spent writing …