Supplemental Serendipity: Congress' Accidental Improvement of Supplemental Jurisdiction

In this article, I contend that the Supplemental Jurisdiction Statute should be given a plain-language interpretation because the reasons underlying the traditional rules of statutory interpretation are sound, this interpretation actually achieves the desirable goal of enhancing the consistency of federal court jurisprudence in this field, and because such a reading can be done without causing institutional harm and disrupting the business of the federal courts. In short, the Supplemental Jurisdiction Statute is neither broke nor in need of major overhaul or abandonment.