Opinion of the Court the authorities, the Court concluded that a divorced wife could acquire a citizenship separate from that of her former husband and that a suit to enforce an alimony decree rested within the federal courts' equity jurisdiction. The Court reached these conclusions after summarily dismissing the former husband's contention that the case involved a subject matter outside the federal courts' jurisdiction. In so stating, however, the Court also announced the following limitation on federal jurisdiction: "Our first remark is-and we wish it to be remembered that this is not a suit asking the court for the allowance of alimony. That has been done by a court of competent jurisdiction. The court in Wisconsin was asked to interfere to prevent that decree from being defeated by fraud. "We disclaim altogether any jurisdiction in the courts of the United States upon the subject of divorce, or for the allowance of alimony, either as an original proceeding in chancery or as an incident to divorce a vinculo, or to one from bed and board." Barber, supra, at 584. As a general matter, the dissenters agreed with these statements, but took issue with the Court's holding that the instant action to enforce an alimony decree was within the equity jurisdiction of the federal courts. The statements disclaiming jurisdiction over divorce and alimony decree suits, though technically dicta, formed the basis for excluding "domestic relations" cases from the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts, a jurisdictional limitation those courts have recognized ever since. The Barber Court, however, cited no authority and did not discuss the foundation for its announcement. Since that time, the Court has dealt only occasionally with the domestic relations limitation on federal-court jurisdiction, and it has never addressed the basis for such a limitation. Because we are unwilling to cast aside an understood rule that has been recognized for nearly Opinion of the Court a century and a half, we feel compelled to explain why we will continue to recognize this limitation on federal jurisdiction. A Counsel argued in Barber that the Constitution prohibited federal courts from exercising jurisdiction over domestic relations cases. Brief for Appellant in Barber v. Barber, D. T. 1858, No. 44, pp. 4-5. An examination of Article III, Barber itself, and our cases since Barber makes clear that the Constitution does not exclude domestic relations cases from the jurisdiction otherwise granted by statute to the federal courts. Article III, §2, of the Constitution provides in pertinent part: "Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;-to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;-to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;-to Controversies between two or more States;-between a State and Citizens of another State;-between Citizens of different States;-between Citizens of the same State claiming Land under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects." This section delineates the absolute limits on the federal courts' jurisdiction. But in articulating three different terms to define jurisdiction-"Cases, in Law and Equity," "Cases," and "Controversies"-this provision contains no limitation on subjects of a domestic relations nature. Nor did Barber purport to ground the domestic relations exception in these constitutional limits on federal jurisdiction. The Court's discussion of federal judicial power to hear suits Opinion of the Court of a domestic relations nature contains no mention of the Constitution, see Barber, 21 How., at 584, and it is logical to presume that the Court based its statement limiting such power on narrower statutory, rather than broader constitutional, grounds. Cf. Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building & Construction Trades Council, 485 U. S. 568, 575 (1988). Subsequent decisions confirm that Barber was not relying on constitutional limits in justifying the exception. In one such case, for instance, the Court stated the "long established rule" that federal courts lack jurisdiction over certain domestic relations matters as having been based on the assumptions that "husband and wife cannot usually be citizens of different States, so long as the marriage relation continues (a rule which has been somewhat relaxed in recent cases), and for the further reason that a suit for divorce in itself involves no pecuniary value." De la Rama v. De la Rama, 201 U. S. 303, 307 (1906). Since Article III contains no monetary limit on suits brought pursuant to federal diversity jurisdiction, De la Rama's articulation of the "rule" in terms of the statutory requirements for diversity jurisdiction further supports the view that the exception is not grounded in the Constitution. Moreover, even while citing with approval the Barber language purporting to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts over domestic relations matters, the Court has heard appeals from territorial courts involving divorce, see, e. g., De la Rama, supra; Simms v. Simms, 175 U. S. 162 (1899), and has upheld the exercise of original jurisdiction by federal courts in the District of Columbia to decide divorce actions, see, e. g., Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U. S. 530, 581, n. 54 (1962). Thus, even were the statements in De la Rama referring to the statutory prerequisites of diversity jurisdiction alone not persuasive testament to the statutory origins of the rule, by hearing appeals from legislative, or Article I, courts, this Court implicitly has made clear its understanding Opinion of the Court that the source of the constraint on jurisdiction from Barber was not Article III; otherwise the Court itself would have lacked jurisdiction over appeals from these legislative courts. See National Mut. Ins. Co. v. Tidewater Transfer Co., 337 U. S. 582, 643 (1949) (Vinson, C. J., dissenting) ("We can no more review a legislative court's decision of a case which is not among those enumerated in Art. III than we can hear a case from a state court involving purely state law questions"). We therefore have no difficulty concluding that when the Barber Court "disclaim[ed] altogether any jurisdiction in the courts of the United States upon the subject of divorce," 21 How., at 584, it was not basing its statement on the Constitution.3 B That Article III, §2, does not mandate the exclusion of domestic relations cases from federal-court jurisdiction, however, does not mean that such courts necessarily must retain and exercise jurisdiction over such cases. Other constitutional provisions explain why this is so. Article I, §8, cl. 9, for example, authorizes Congress "[t]o constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court" and Article III, § 1, states that "[t]he judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." The Court's cases state the rule that "if inferior federal courts were created, [Congress was not] required to invest them with all the jurisdiction it was authorized to bestow under Art. III." Palmore v. United States, 411 U. S. 389, 401 (1973). 3 We read Ohio ex rel. Popovici v. Agler, 280 U. S. 379 (1930), as in accord with this conclusion. In that case, the Court referenced the language in In re Burrus, 136 U. S. 586 (1890), regarding the domestic relations exception and then held that a state court was not precluded by the Constitution and relevant federal statutes from exercising jurisdiction over a divorce suit brought against the Roumanian vice-consul. See 280 U. S., at 383-384. Opinion of the Court This position has held constant since at least 1845, when the Court stated that "the judicial power of the United States... is (except in enumerated instances, applicable exclusively to this Court) dependent for its distribution and organization, and for the modes of its exercise, entirely upon the action of Congress, who possess the sole power of creating the tribunals (inferior to the Supreme Court) . . . and of investing them with jurisdiction either limited, concurrent, or exclusive, and of withholding jurisdiction from them in the exact degrees and character which to Congress may seem proper for the public good." Cary v. Curtis, 3 How. 236, 245. See Sheldon v. Sill, 8 How. 441 (1850); Plaquemines Tropical Fruit Co. v. Henderson, 170 U. S. 511 (1898); Kline v. Burke Constr. Co., 260 U. S. 226 (1922); Lockerty v. Phillips, 319 U. S. 182 (1943). We thus turn our attention to the relevant jurisdictional statutes. The Judiciary Act of 1789 provided that "the circuit courts shall have original cognizance, concurrent with the courts of the several States, of all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity, where the matter in dispute exceeds, exclusive of costs, the sum or value of five hundred dollars, and an alien is a party, or the suit is between a citizen of the State where the suit is brought, and a citizen of another State." Act of Sept. 24, 1789, § 11, 1 Stat. 78 (emphasis added). The defining phrase, “all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity," remained a key element of statutory provisions demarcating the terms of diversity jurisdiction until 1948, when Congress amended the diversity jurisdiction provision to eliminate this phrase and replace in its stead the term "all civil actions." 1948 Judicial Code and Judiciary Act, 62 Stat. 930, 28 U. S. C. § 1332. The Barber majority itself did not expressly refer to the diversity statute's use of the limitation on "suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity." The dissenters in Barber, however, implicitly made such a reference, for they suggested that the federal courts had no power over certain |