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THE IVORY TOWER of the place turned to the sea, rested here again some minutes. She sought indeed after a moment the support of an elaborately rustic bench that ministered to ease and contemplation, whence she would rake much of the rest of the small sloping domain; the fair prospect, the great sea spaces, the line of low receding coast that bristled, either way she looked, with still more costly "places," and in particular the proprietor's wide and bedimmed verandah, this at present commonly occupied by her "prowling" father, as she now always thought of him, though if charged she would doubtless have admitted with the candour she was never able to fail of that she herself prowled during these days of tension quite as much as he.

He would already have come over, she was well aware—come over on grounds of his own, which were quite different from hers; yet she was scarce the less struck, off at her point of vantage, with the way he now sat unconscious of her, at the outer edge and where the light pointed his presence, in a low basket-chair which covered him in save for little more than his small sharp shrunken profile, detached against the bright further distance, and his small protrusive foot, crossed over a knee and agitated by incessant nervous motion whenever he was thus locked in thought. Seldom had he more produced for her the appearance from which she had during the last three years never known 3


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 capitalist obey the law will cause general surprise, may be true. Whether it will cause general indignation rather depends on whether our social intercourse is entirely confined to Park Lane, or any such pigsties built of gold. But the journalist proceeds to say, his neck rising higher and higher out of his collar, and his hair rising higher and higher on his head, in short, his resemblance to the Dickens' original increasing every instant, that he does not mean that the law against corruption should be less stringent, but that the burden should be borne by the whole community. This may mean that whenever a rich man breaks the law, all the poor men ought to be made to pay his fine. But I will suppose a slightly less insane meaning. I will suppose it means that the whole power of the commonwealth should be used to prosecute an offender of this kind. That, of course, can only mean that the matter will be decided by that instrument which still pretends

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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 to represent the whole power of the commonwealth. In other words, the Government will judge the Government.

Now this is a perfectly plain piece of brute logic. We need not go into the other delicious things in the article, as when it says that "in old times Parliament had to be protected against Royal invasion by the man in the street." Parliament has to be protected now against the man in the street. Parliament is simply the most detested and the most detestable of all our national institutions: all that is evident enough. What is interesting is the blank and staring fallacy of the attempted reply.

A long while ago, before all the Liberals died, a Liberal introduced a Bill to prevent Parliament being merely packed with the slaves of financial interests. For that purpose


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 he established the excellent democratic principle that the private citizen, as such, might protest against public corruption. He was called the Common Informer. I believe the miserable party papers are really reduced to playing on the degradation of the two words in modern language. Now the word "common" in "Common Informer" means exactly what it means in "common sense" or "Book of Common Prayer," or (above all) in "House of Commons." It does not mean anything low or vulgar; any more than they do. The only difference is that the House of Commons really is low and vulgar; and the Common Informer isn't. It is just the same with the word "Informer." It does not mean spy or sneak. It means one who gives information. It means what "journalist" ought to mean. The only difference is that the Common Informer may be paid if he tells the truth. The common journalist will be ruined if he does.


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 Now the quite plain point before the party journalist is this: If he really means that a corrupt bargain between a Government and a contractor ought to be judged by public opinion, he must (nowadays) mean Parliament; that is, the caucus that controls Parliament. And he must decide between one of two views. Either he means that there Can be no such thing as a corrupt Government. Or he means that it is one of the characteristic qualities of a corrupt Government to denounce its own corruption. I laugh; and I leave him his choice.


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The Ivory Tower (London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917)/The Ivory Tower

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THE IVORY TOWER him to vary and which would have told his story, all his story, every inch of it and with the last intensity, she felt, to a spectator capable of being struck with him as one might after all happen to be struck. What she herself recognised at any rate, and really at this particular moment as she had never done, was how his having retired from active business, as they said, given up everything and entered upon the first leisure of his life, had in the oddest way the effect but of emphasising his absorption, denying his detachment and presenting him as steeped up to the chin. Most of all on such occasions did what his life had meant come home to her, and then most, frankly, did that meaning seem small; it was exactly as the contracted size of his little huddled figure in the basket-chair.

He was a person without an alternative, and if any had ever been open to him, at an odd hour or two, somewhere in his inner dimness, he had long since closed the gate against it and now revolved in the hard-rimmed circle from which he had not a single issue. You couldn't retire without something or somewhere to retire to, you must have planted a single tree at least for shade or be able to turn a key in some yielding door; but to say that her extraordinary parent was surrounded by the desert was almost to flatter the void into which he invited one to step. He conformed in short to his necessity of absolute interest—interest, that is, in his own private facts, which were facts of 4


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Rh The oldest books written in the are the  from the thirteenth century. In them we find the separation of the Danish language from the Old Norse in rapid progress, and the process of separation is at this period already so far advanced that it must be presumed to have begun at a much earlier date: There appear three popular dialects, those of Scania, Zealand, and Jutland. The vocabulary is still the same as in the Old Norse, but the old inflectional endings have for the most part disappeared, and the vowels have undergone various changes. In the centuries immediately following, shortly before the Reformation, there was developed on the basis of the Zealand dialect a uniform Danish literary language, in which the old stamp was gradually lost. The language became by degrees softer, the multitude of inflectional and derivative endings, which are so fully developed in the Old Norse, were so far as practicable abandoned, and the vocabulary of the language began to admit elements. In reference to grammar the language occupied during the great spiritual activity of the Reformation period, which produced a vast Danish literature, essentially the position it does at the present time.

The old Danish laws are of no less importance to philology than they are to the history of culture. They are partly secular, partly ecclesiastical, and so far as the form in which they exist is concerned, there is no essential difference between them as regards the time of their origin, for they all belong to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and none of the manuscripts are older than 1250. But in reality the secular laws can be traced far back into antiquity, while the ecclesiastical are a product of the institutions introduced together with Christianity. Of the oldest codes which were framed for a special purpose, as for instance Knud the Great's "Vederlagsret" and Palnatoke's laws for the Jomsviking fraternity, only a few fragments have been preserved, while Saxo and Svend Aagesen give us a few extracts from them translated, of course, into Latin. The secular laws are based on legal


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108 customs followed from time out of mind and preserved by oral tradition. That they might be the more easily remembered they were expressed in short, pithy sentences, which were frequently given in the form of alliterated poetry. The number of these legal provisions naturally increased with the lapse of years, so that it became necessary to sift and arrange them. This task was performed at royal command by men skilled in the law, and in this manner each district obtained its own code based on the traditional provisions that had been in force in smaller judicial districts which gradually grew into larger circuits. There still exists a large number of manuscripts of these codes from various periods of antiquity.

The most important Danish provincial codes are the, both the , and the (Jydske Lov). The first is from Valdemar the Great (1157—82), and among the manuscripts of it is found the only runic manuscript in existence. The first Zealand law is also the work of the same king, and the second is named after a king Erik, but it is not known which one of the Danish kings who bore this name in the thirteenth century is meant. The Jutland law, which was promulgated by king Valdemar the Victorious in 1241, and in the passing of which Bishop Gunner took part, is the most carefully prepared of all the provincial laws, and accordingly it yields the greatest harvest to the student of the history of culture, giving, as it does, a most faithful picture of the social conditions of the country, and of the circumstances amid which people lived in that age. The king is even said to have intended to make it the general law of the whole kingdom. The Jutland law was in force in Denmark in 1683, when it was superseded by the Danish law of Christian V, while in Slesvig it has in many respects retained its validity even down to the most recent times. Of the ecclesiastical laws, the Scanian, promulgated by Archbishop Eskild, and the Zealand ecclesiastical law, given by Archbishop Absalon, are the most important.


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Rh

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 Rh at resuming his fatuous manner, “I’m going the pace a little too hard, eh! Makes one fanciful. But the fact is, at times”—he spoke gravely again—“I feel as if there were something happening, something coming.”

“Knickerbocker,” I said earnestly, “Father Knickerbocker, don’t you know that something is happening, that this very evening as we are sitting here in all this riot, the President of the United States is to come before Congress on the most solemn mission that ever”

But my speech fell unheeded. Knickerbocker had picked up his glass again and was leering over it at a bevy of girls dancing upon the stage.

“Look at that girl,” he interrupted quickly, “the one dancing at the end. What do you think of her, eh? Some peach!”

Knickerbocker broke off suddenly. For at this moment our ears caught the sound of a noise, a distant tumult, as it were, far down the street and growing nearer. The old man had drawn himself erect in his seat, his hand to his ear, listening as he caught the sound.

“Out on the Broad Way,” he said, instinctively calling it by its ancient name as if a flood of memories were upon him. “Do you hear it? Listen—listen—what is it? I’ve

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 Rh heard that sound before—I’ve heard every sound on the Broad Way these two centuries back—what is it? I seem to know it!”

The sound and tumult as of running feet and of many voices crying came louder from the street. The people at the tables had turned in their seats to listen. The music of the orchestra had stopped. The waiters had thrown back the heavy curtains from the windows and the people were crowding to them to look out into the street. Knickerbocker had risen in his place, his eyes looked toward the windows, but his gaze was fixed on vacancy as with one who sees a vision passing.

“I know the sound,” he cried. “I see it all again. Look, can’t you see them? It’s Massachusetts soldiers marching South to the war-can’t you hear the beating of the drums and the shrill calling of the fife-the regiments from the North, the first to come. I saw them pass, here where we are sitting, sixty years ago”

Knickerbocker paused a moment, his hand still extended in the air, and then with a great light upon his face he cried:

“I know it now! I know what it meant, the feeling that has haunted me—the sounds I kept hearing—the guns of the ships at sea

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Rh Both of them belong to the second half of the twelfth century, and are in the main identical as to contents. Besides there are various Danish municipal laws and other special codes, which, however, were originally written partly, in Latin, and have come down to us in translations from a much later period, so that their value as linguistic monuments is comparatively small. An important exception is the Flensburg municipal law of 1284, of which there is a manuscript of well-nigh equally ancient date. There are also various statutes of guilds and associations, which are of linguistic and historical value.

Besides these collections of laws there are but few Danish books from the middle age, and not many of these have any general value, excepting, of course, what light they throw on the history of Danish language and culture. The "canonicus" (died 1244) of Roskilde, ordinary physician to Erik Plogpenning, wrote a small number of medical works, probably in Latin, and of these we have a few translations into Danish, made in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Of historical works written in Danish, the alone is worthy of mention. All that it contains in regard to antiquity is pure fiction, and the part relating to later times is nothing but dry annals. It exists both in Danish and in Latin, and the Danish text, which goes to the year 1313, seems to have served as the basis of the Latin version.

But while the vernacular, as we have now seen, lived but a sickly existence in the written literature, it enjoyed a youthful, vigorous life on the lips of the people in the popular ballads [sic] which were scattered throughout the north of Europe; hence it is eminently proper to consider here this poetry in its triple connection with Denmark, Norway and Sweden.


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Rh

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110 The popular ballads of the North may in one sense be regarded as a continuation of the Old Norse popular poetry, with which we are acquainted from the mythic and heroic songs of the Edda. Even their form points to this old poetry. Notwithstanding the great differences, which can easily be pointed out, and according to which one would, at a first glance, be inclined to regard the metric form and the rhymes generally used during the middle age as essentially different from those employed in the Edda songs and as based on totally different principles; still a closer investigation seems fully to establish the fact that the younger is really a product of the older poetical form. A characteristic feature of the ballad is the strophe, consisting of two or four lines, in which the final rhyme has taken the place of the alliterative rhyme. This and the refrain are the essential facts upon which the theory is based that the Edda lays and the middle-age ballads are not child and parent. But both things also occur in the old poetry, though only sporadically. They can, however, be distinctly pointed out, and thus it is not possible to maintain that these elements in the popular ballad are something entirely new, something that did not exist before. We are compelled to acknowledge that they were developed out of preexisting principles, and that in this evolution the lyrical character predominating in the ballads gave their development an altogether peculiar direction. Already in the skaldic poetry we encounter these elements, although developed in a very different and far less pregnant manner. From a rhythmical point of view both the leading forms which occur in the ballad, the strophe of two and that of four lines with regular accent but irregular syllabic measure, are manifestly built on the same fundamental plan as the strophe of the fornyrðalag and Ljdóðaháttr.

If we consider the poetical style of the ballad we are also forced to admit its near kinship to the poetry of antiquity. The entire treatment of the ballad, in spite of the romantic stamp which is peculiar to it, and which accords with its


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Rh

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Rh much higher degree of lyric character, is in many essential and important respects analogous to that of the old poetry. Precisely as in the latter, the action in the ballad is developed in bold and mighty strokes, and there is manifestly an effort to make it as strong and effective as possible. For this reason only the most important facts are presented, and these are given in short, striking sentences which throw a strong light on the characters and situations described. Whatever does not concern the main action or does not essentially contribute toward awakening the sentiment which the poet wishes to produce is either wholly omitted or merely alluded to. Hence the rapidity with which the theme is developed both in the ballad and in the ancient songs, and hence also the great array of stereotyped phrases for the same thought and the same situation, which the ballad has produced and still continues to employ.

The language in which we possess the ballads is, upon the whole, younger than the songs themselves, since the latter had long been preserved by oral tradition before they were put in writing. None of the collections extant date back beyond the sixteenth century, and but very few of them belong to this period. Not before the seventeenth century was there any extensive work done in recording the old songs, which, up to this time, had lived only on the lips of the people. The natural inference is that these songs, both as regards form, substance and language, had undergone various changes. Of a great number of them we have several widely different versions, so that it is exceedingly difficult to form even an approximately correct idea of the original aspect of the ballad. But however corrupted they may be, they still have retained enough of beauty to charm any one who has taste for poetry. Even their language, despite the barbaric style in which they were put in writing by the noble ladies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, remains full of interest, because it has preserved so many old words and forms which we could not otherwise have known. They frequently, it is


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Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Knowles

The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) gives federal district courts original jurisdiction over class actions in which, among other things, the matter in controversy exceeds $5 million in sum or value, 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(2), (d)(5), and provides that to determine whether a matter exceeds that amount the “claims of the individual class members must be aggregated,” § 1332(d)(6). When respondent Knowles filed a proposed class action in Arkansas state court against petitioner Standard Fire Insurance Company, he stipulated that he and the class would seek less than $5 million in damages. Pointing to CAFA, petitioner removed the case to the Federal District Court, but it remanded to the state court, concluding that the amount in controversy fell below the CAFA threshold in light of Knowles' stipulation, even though it found that the amount would have fallen above the threshold absent the stipulation. The Eighth Circuit declined to hear petitioner's appeal.

Held: Knowles' stipulation does not defeat federal jurisdiction under CAFA. Pp. 592–596.

(a) Here, the precertification stipulation can tie Knowles' hands because stipulations are binding on the party who makes them, see ''Christian Legal Soc. Chapter of Univ. of Cal., Hastings College of Law v. Martinez'', 561 U.S. 661. However, the stipulation does not speak for those Knowles purports to represent, for a plaintiff who files a proposed class action cannot legally bind members of the proposed class before the class is certified. See Smith v. Bayer Corp., 564 U.S. 299, 315. Because Knowles lacked authority to concede the amount in controversy for absent class members, the District Court wrongly concluded that his stipulation could overcome its finding that the CAFA jurisdictional threshold had been met. Pp. 592–593.

(b) Knowles concedes that federal jurisdiction cannot be based on contingent future events. Yet, because a stipulation must be binding and a named plaintiff cannot bind precertification class members, the amount he stipulated is in effect contingent. CAFA does not forbid a federal court to consider the possibility that a nonbinding, amount-limiting, stipulation may not survive the class certification process. To hold otherwise would, for CAFA jurisdictional purposes, treat a nonbinding stipulation as if it were binding, exalt form over substance, and run counter [p589] to CAFA's objective: ensuring “Federal court consideration of interstate cases of national importance.” § 2(b)(2), 119 Stat. 5.

It may be simpler for a federal district court to value the amount in controversy on the basis of a stipulation, but ignoring a nonbinding stipulation merely requires the federal judge to do what she must do in cases with no stipulation: aggregate the individual class members' claims. While individual plaintiffs may avoid removal to federal court by stipulating to amounts that fall below the federal jurisdictional threshold, the key characteristic of such stipulations—missing here—is that they are legally binding on all plaintiffs. Pp. 593–596.

Vacated and remanded.

BREYER, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Theane Evangelis Kapur, Joshua S. Lipshutz, Amir C. Tayrani, Stephen E. Goldman, Wystan M. Ackerman, and Lyn P. Pruitt.

David C. Frederick argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Brendan J. Crimmins, Jonathan S. Massey, and Richard E. Norman.

title: Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Knowles


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Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Knowles/Opinion of the Court

[p590] JUSTICE BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) provides that the federal "district courts shall have original jurisdiction" over a civil "class action" if, among other things, the "matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $5,000,000." 28 U.S.C. §§ 1332(d)(2), (5). The statute adds that "to determine whether the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $5,000,000," the "claims of the individual class members shall be aggregated." § 1332(d)(6).

The question presented concerns a class-action plaintiff who stipulates, prior to certification of the class, that he, and the class he seeks to represent, will not seek damages that exceed $5 million in total. Does that stipulation remove the case from CAFA's scope? In our view, it does not.

I
In April 2011 respondent, Greg Knowles, filed this proposed class action in an Arkansas state court against petitioner, the Standard Fire Insurance Company. Knowles claimed that, when the company had made certain homeowner's insurance loss payments, it had unlawfully failed to [p591] include a general contractor fee. And Knowles sought to certify a class of "hundreds, and possibly thousands" of similarly harmed Arkansas policyholders. App. to Pet. for Cert. 66. In describing the relief sought, the complaint says that the "Plaintiff and Class stipulate they will seek to recover total aggregate damages of less than five million dollars." Id., at 60. An attached affidavit stipulates that Knowles "will not at any time during this case seek damages for the class  in excess of $5,000,000 in the aggregate." Id., at 75.

On May 18, 2011, the company, pointing to CAFA's jurisdictional provision, removed the case to Federal District Court. See 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d); § 1453. Knowles argued for remand on the ground that the District Court lacked jurisdiction. He claimed that the "sum or value" of the "amount in controversy" fell beneath the $5 million threshold. App. to Pet. for Cert. 2. On the basis of evidence presented by the company, the District Court found that that the "sum or value" of the "amount in controversy" would, in the absence of the stipulation, have fallen just above the $5 million threshold. Id., at 2, 8. Nonetheless, in light of Knowles' stipulation, the court concluded that the amount fell beneath the threshold. The court consequently ordered the case remanded to the state court. Id., at 15.

The company appealed from the remand order, but the Eighth Circuit declined to hear the appeal. Id., at 1. See 28 U.S.C. § 1453(c)(1) (2006 ed., Supp. V) (providing discretion to hear an appeal from a remand order). The company petitioned for a writ of certiorari. And, in light of divergent views in the lower courts, we granted the writ. Compare ''Frederick v. Hartford Underwriters Ins. Co., 683 F.3d 1242, 1247 (CA10 2012) (a proposed class-action representative's "attempt to limit damages in the complaint is not dispositive when determining the amount in controversy"); with Rolwing v. Nestle Holdings, Inc.'', 666 F.3d 1069, 1072 (CA8 2012) (a precertification "binding stipulation limiting dam- [p592] ages sought to an amount not exceeding $5 million can be used to defeat CAFA jurisdiction").

II
CAFA provides the federal district courts with "original jurisdiction" to hear a "class action" if the class has more than 100 members, the parties are minimally diverse, and the "matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $5,000,000." 28 U.S.C. §§ 1332(d)(2), (5)(B). To "determine whether the matter in controversy" exceeds that sum, "the claims of the individual class members shall be aggregated." § 1332(d)(6). And those "class members" include "persons (named or unnamed) who fall within the definition of the proposed or certified class." § 1332(d)(1)(D) (emphasis added).

As applied here, the statute tells the District Court to determine whether it has jurisdiction by adding up the value of the claim of each person who falls within the definition of Knowles' proposed class and determine whether the resulting sum exceeds $5 million. If so, there is jurisdiction and the court may proceed with the case. The District Court in this case found that resulting sum would have exceeded $5 million but for the stipulation. And we must decide whether the stipulation makes a critical difference.

In our view, it does not. Our reason is a simple one: Stipulations must be binding. See 9 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 2588, p. 821 (J. Chadbourn rev.1981) (defining a "judicial admission or stipulation" as an "express waiver made by the party or his attorney conceding for the purposes of the trial the truth of some alleged fact" (emphasis deleted)); ''Christian Legal Soc. Chapter of Univ. of Cal., Hastings College of Law v. Martinez, 561 U.S. 661, 677 (2010) (describing a stipulation as binding and conclusive and not subject to subsequent variation (quoting 83 C.J.S., Stipulations § 93 (2000))); 9 Wigmore, supra, § 2590, at 822 (the "vital feature" of a judicial admission is "universally conceded to be its conclusiveness'' upon the party making it"). The stipulation [p593] Knowles proffered to the District Court, however, does not speak for those he purports to represent.

That is because a plaintiff who files a proposed class action cannot legally bind members of the proposed class before the class is certified. See Smith v. Bayer Corp., 564 U.S. 299, 315 (2011) ("Neither a proposed class action nor a rejected class action may bind nonparties"); id., at 313 ([A] nonnamed class member is [not] a party to the class-action litigation before the class is certified (quoting Devlin v. Scardelletti, 536 U.S. 1, 16, n.1 (2002) (SCALIA, J., dissenting))); Brief for Respondent 12 (conceding that "a damages limitation cannot have a binding effect on the merits of absent class members' claims unless and until the class is certified").

Because his precertification stipulation does not bind anyone but himself, Knowles has not reduced the value of the putative class members' claims. For jurisdictional purposes, our inquiry is limited to examining the case "as of the time it was filed in state court," Wisconsin Dept. of Corrections v. Schacht, 524 U.S. 381, 390 (1998). At that point, Knowles lacked the authority to concede the amount-in-controversy issue for the absent class members. The Federal District Court, therefore, wrongly concluded that Knowles' precertification stipulation could overcome its finding that the CAFA jurisdictional threshold had been met.

Knowles concedes that "[f]ederal jurisdiction cannot be based on contingent future events." Brief for Respondent 20. Yet the two legal principles to which we have just referred—that stipulations must be binding and that a named plaintiff cannot bind precertification class members—mean that the amount to which Knowles has stipulated is in effect contingent.

If, for example, as Knowles' complaint asserts, "hundreds, and possibly thousands" of persons in Arkansas have similar claims, App. to Pet. for Cert. 66, and if each of those claims places a significant sum in controversy, the state court might certify the class and permit the case to proceed, but only on [p594] the condition that the stipulation be excised. Or a court might find that Knowles is an inadequate representative due to the artificial cap he purports to impose on the class' recovery. E.g., ''Back Doctors Ltd. v. Metropolitan Property & Cas. Ins. Co.'', 637 F.3d 827, 830–831 (CA7 2011) (noting a class representative's fiduciary duty not to "throw away what could be a major component of the class's recovery"). Similarly, another class member could intervene with an amended complaint (without a stipulation), and the District Court might permit the action to proceed with a new representative. See 5 A. Conte & H. Newberg, Class Actions § 16:7, p. 154 (4th ed. 2002) ("[M]embers of a class have a right to intervene if their interests are not adequately represented by existing parties"). Even were these possibilities remote in Knowles' own case, there is no reason to think them farfetched in other cases where similar stipulations could have more dramatic amount-lowering effects.

The strongest counterargument, we believe, takes a syllogistic form: First, this complaint contains a presently nonbinding stipulation that the class will seek damages that amount to less than $5 million. Second, if the state court eventually certifies that class, the stipulation will bind those who choose to remain as class members. Third, if the state court eventually insists upon modification of the stipulation (thereby permitting class members to obtain more than $5 million), it will have in effect created a new, different case. Fourth, CAFA, however, permits the federal court to consider only the complaint that the plaintiff has filed, i.e., this complaint, not a new, modified (or amended) complaint that might eventually emerge.

Our problem with this argument lies in its conclusion. We do not agree that CAFA forbids the federal court to consider, for purposes of determining the amount in controversy, the very real possibility that a nonbinding, amount-limiting, stipulation may not survive the class certification process. This potential outcome does not result in the creation of a new [p595] case not now before the federal court. To hold otherwise would, for CAFA jurisdictional purposes, treat a nonbinding stipulation as if it were binding, exalt form over substance, and run directly counter to CAFA's primary objective: ensuring "Federal court consideration of interstate cases of national importance." § 2(b)(2), 119 Stat. 5. It would also have the effect of allowing the subdivision of a $100 million action into 21 just–below–$5–million state-court actions simply by including nonbinding stipulations; such an outcome would squarely conflict with the statute's objective.

We agree with Knowles that a federal district court might find it simpler to value the amount in controversy on the basis of a stipulation than to aggregate the value of the individual claims of all who meet the class description. We also agree that, when judges must decide jurisdictional matters, simplicity is a virtue. See Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 559 U.S. 77, 94 (2010). But to ignore a nonbinding stipulation does no more than require the federal judge to do what she must do in cases without a stipulation and what the statute requires, namely "aggregat[e]" the "claims of the individual class members." 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(6).

Knowles also points out that federal courts permit individual plaintiffs, who are the masters of their complaints, to avoid removal to federal court, and to obtain a remand to state court, by stipulating to amounts at issue that fall below the federal jurisdictional requirement. That is so. See St. Paul Mercury Indemnity Co. v. Red Cab Co., 303 U.S. 283, 294 (1938) ("If [a plaintiff] does not desire to try his case in the federal court he may resort to the expedient of suing for less than the jurisdictional amount, and though he would be justly entitled to more, the defendant cannot remove"). But the key characteristic about those stipulations is that they are legally binding on all plaintiffs. See 14AA C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3702.1, p. 335 (4th ed. 2011) (federal court, as condition for remand, can insist on a "binding affidavit or stipulation [p596] that the plaintiff will continue to claim less than the jurisdictional amount" (emphasis added)). That essential feature is missing here, as Knowles cannot yet bind the absent class.

Knowles argues in the alternative that a stipulation is binding to the extent it limits attorney's fees so that the amount in controversy remains below the CAFA threshold. We do not consider this issue because Knowles' stipulation did not provide for that option.

In sum, the stipulation at issue here can tie Knowles' hands, but it does not resolve the amount-in-controversy question in light of his inability to bind the rest of the class. For this reason, we believe the District Court, when following the statute to aggregate the proposed class members' claims, should have ignored that stipulation. Because it did not, we vacate the judgment below and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.


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112 true, appear in a very disguised form, since neither the reciter nor the scribe understood their purport, so that only a far advanced linguistic science has been able to interpret them. In this respect, and in spite of the levelling influence of tradition, the ballads have m many ways preserved traces of what they owe to antiquity.

By their contents, the ballads are divided into two principal groups: 1. The and, including songs of magic and versified wonder-stories. 2. of, to which may be added various other categories of songs, chiefly relating to the adventures of knights.

In the of these groups we include all those songs which are more or less definitely connected with the ancient mythic and heroic poetry. Some of them are mere transformations of old songs with which we are familiar in their original form, and this applies, for instance, to the ballads, "Tor on Havsgaard" and "Young Sveidal." The former is based on the exquisite old lay about the god Thor, when disguised as Freyja, with Loke as his handmaid, he recovers his hammer from Jotunheim (Thrymskviða). In the ballad we are able to trace the plot worked out in the old lay, step by step, and hence the lay, which was popular throughout the North, must have received its present form at a time when the myth still lived in the memory of the people, though it was no longer an object of faith; that is to say, soon after the introduction of Christianity. The memory of the god Thor, particularly, continued in many ways in the North. In a most suggestive manner it was applied to Christian legendary heroes like Olaf the Saint, and even at the present time it survives in popular legends. Thus it is quite natural that the ballad which represents in the purest and clearest manner the transformation of an old mythic lay, should by preference be connected with that divinity. In the ballad the myth has of course been conceived and rendered as a merry story. Thor is no more the god of Asgard, but the nobleman, "Tor


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THE IVORY TOWER numerical calculation altogether: how could it not be so when he had dispossessed himself, if there had even been the slightest selection in the matter, of every faculty except the calculating? If he hadn't thought in figures how could he possibly have thought at all—and oh the intensity with which he was thinking at that hour! It was as if she literally watched him just then and there dry up in yet another degree to everything but his genius. His genius might at the same time have gathered in to a point of about the size of the end of a pin. Such at least was the image of these things, or a part of it, determined for her under the impression of the moment.

He had come over with the same promptitude every morning of the last fortnight and had stayed on nearly till luncheon, sitting about in different places as if they were equally his own, smoking, always smoking, the big portentously "special" cigars that were now the worst thing for him and lost in the thoughts she had in general long since ceased to wonder about, taking them now for granted with an indifference from which the apprehension we have noted was but the briefest of lapses. He had over and above that particular matter of her passing perception, he had as they all had, goodness knew, and as she herself must have done not least, the air of waiting for something he didn't speak of and in fact couldn't gracefully mention; with which moreover the adopted 5


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THE IVORY TOWER practice, and the irrepressible need of it, that she had been having under her eye, brought out for her afresh, little as she invited or desired any renewal of their salience, the several most pointed parental signs—harmless oddities as she tried to content herself with calling them, but sharp little symbols of stubborn little facts as she would have felt them hadn't she forbidden herself to feel. She had forbidden herself to feel, but was none the less as undefended against one of the ugly truths that hovered there before her in the charming silver light as against another. That the terrible little man she watched at his meditations wanted nothing in the world so much in these hours as to know what was "going to be left" by the old associate of his operations and sharer of his spoils—this, as Mr. Gaw's sole interest in the protracted crisis, matched quite her certainty of his sense that, however their doomed friend should pan out, two-thirds of the show would represent the unholy profits of the great wrong he himself had originally suffered.

This she knew was what it meant—that her father should perch there like a ruffled hawk, motionless but for his single tremor, with his beak, which had pecked so many hearts out, visibly sharper than ever, yet only his talons nervous; not that he at last cared a straw, really, but that he was incapable of thought save in sublimities of arithmetic, and that the question of what old 6


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THE IVORY TOWER Frank would have done with the fruits of his swindle, on the occasion of the rupture that had kept them apart in hate and vituperation for so many years, was one of the things that could hold him brooding, day by day and week by week, after the fashion of a philosopher tangled in some maze of metaphysics. As the end, for the other participant in that history, appeared to draw near, she had with the firmest, wisest hand she could lay on it patched up the horrid difference; had artfully induced her father to take a house at Newport for the summer, and then, pleading, insisting, that they should in common decency, or, otherwise expressed, in view of the sick man's sore stricken state, meet again, had won the latter round, unable as he was even then to do more than shuffle downstairs and take an occasional drive, to some belief in the sincerity of her intervention. She had got at him—under stress of an idea with which her ostensible motive had nothing to do; she had obtained entrance, demanding as all from herself that he should see her, and had little by little, to the further illumination of her plan, felt that she made him wonder at her perhaps more than he had ever wondered at anything; so that after this everything else was a part of that impression.

Strange to say, she had presently found herself quite independently interested; more interested than by any transaction, any chapter of 7


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THE IVORY TOWER, in her whole specifically filial history. Not that it mattered indeed if, in all probability—and positively so far back as during the time of active hostilities—this friend and enemy of other days had been predominantly in the right: the case, at the best and for either party, showed so scantly for edifying that where was the light in which her success could have figured as a moral or a sentimental triumph? There had been no real beauty for her, at its apparent highest pitch, in that walk of the now more complacently valid of the two men across the Avenue, a walk taken as she and her companion had continued regularly to take it since, that he might hold out his so long clenched hand, under her earnest admonition, to the antagonist cut into afresh this year by sharper knives than any even in Gaw's armoury. They had consented alike to what she wished, and without knowing why she most wished it: old Frank, oddly enough, because he liked her, as she felt, for herself, once she gave him the chance and took all the trouble; and her father because—well, that was an old story. For a long time now, three or four years at least, she had had, as she would have said, no difficulty with him; and she knew just when, she knew almost just how, the change had begun to show.

Signal and supreme proof had come to him one day that save for his big plain quiet daughter (quiet, that is, unless when she knocked over a light 8


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THE IVORY TOWER gilt chair or swept off a rash table-ornament in brushing expansively by,) he was absolutely alone on the human field, utterly unattended by any betrayal whatever that a fellow-creature could like him or, when the inevitable day should come, could disinterestedly miss him. She knew how of old her inexplicable, her almost ridiculous type had disconcerted and disappointed him; but with this, at a given moment, it had come to him that she represented quantity and mass, that there was a great deal of her, so that she would have pressed down even a balance appointed to weigh bullion; and as there was nothing he was fonder of than such attestations of value he had really ended by drawing closer to her, as who should say, and by finding countenance in the breadth of personal and social shadow that she projected. This was the sole similitude about him of a living alternative, and it served only as she herself provided it. He had actually turned into a personal relation with her as he might have turned, out of the glare and the noise and the harsh recognitions of the market, into some large cool dusky temple; a place where idols other than those of his worship vaguely loomed and gleamed, so that the effect at moments might be rather awful, but where at least he could sit very still, could breathe very softly, could look about obliquely and discreetly, could in fact wander a little on tiptoe and treat the place, with a mixture of pride and fear, almost as his own. 9


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THE IVORY TOWER He had brooded and brooded, even as he was brooding now; and that habit she at least had in common with him, though their subjects of thought were so different. Thus it was exactly that she began to make out at the time his actual need to wonder at her, the only fact outside his proper range that had ever cost him a speculative impulse, still more a speculative failure; even as she was to make it out later on in the case of their Newport neighbour, and to recognise above all that though a certain savour of accepted discomfort had, in the connection, to pervade her father's consciousness, no taste of resentment was needed, as in the present case, to sweeten it. Nothing had more interested our intelligent young woman than to note in each of these overstrained, yet at the same time safely resting accumulators—and to note it as a thing unprecedented up to this latest season—an unexpressed, even though to some extent invoked, relief under the sense, the confirmed suspicion, of certain anomalies of ignorance and indifference as to what they themselves stood for, anomalies they could scarcely have begun, on the first glimmer, by so much as taking for realities. It had become verily, on the part of the poor bandaged and bolstered and heavily-breathing object of her present solicitude, as she had found it on that of his still comparatively agile and intensely acute critic, the queer mark of an inward relief to meet, so far as they had arts or terms for it, any 10


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THE IVORY TOWER intimation of what she might have to tell them. From her they would take things they never could have taken, and never had, from anyone else. There were some such intimations that her father, of old, had only either dodged with discernible art or directly set his little white face against; he hadn't wanted them, and had in fact been afraid of them—so that after all perhaps his caring so little what went on in any world not subject to his direct intelligence might have had the qualification that he guessed she could imagine, and that to see her, or at least to feel her, imagine was like the sense of an odd draught about him when doors and windows were closed.

Up in the sick man's room the case was quite other; she had been admitted there but three times, very briefly, and a week had elapsed since the last, yet she had created in him a positive want to communicate, or at any rate to receive communication. She shouldn't see him again—the pair of doctors and the trio of nurses had been at one about that; but he had caused her to be told that he liked to know of her coming and hoped she would make herself quite at home. This she took for an intended sign, a hint that what she had in spite of difficulties managed to say now kept him company in the great bedimmed and disinfected room from which other society was banished. Her father in fine he ignored after that not particularly beautiful moment of bare recognition brought 11


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THE IVORY TOWER about by her at the bedside; her father was the last thing in the world that actually concerned him. But his not ignoring herself could but have a positive meaning; which was that she had made the impression she sought. Only would Graham Fielder arrive in time? She was not in a position to ask for news of him, but was sure each morning that if there had been any gage of this Miss Mumby, the most sympathetic of the nurses and with whom she had established a working intelligence, would be sufficiently interested to come out and speak to her. After waiting a while, however, she recognised that there could be no Miss Mumby yet and went over to her father in the great porch.

"Don't you get tired," she put to him, "of just sitting round here?"

He turned to her his small neat finely-wrinkled face, of an extreme yellowish pallor and which somehow suggested at this end of time an empty glass that had yet held for years so much strong wine that a faint golden tinge still lingered on from it. "I can't get any more tired than I am already." His tone was flat, weak and so little charged with petulance that it betrayed the long habit of an almost exasperating mildness. This effect, at the same time, so far from suggesting any positive tradition of civility was somehow that of a commonness instantly and peculiarly exposed. "It's a better place than ours," he added in a moment. 12


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THE IVORY TOWER "But I don't care." And then he went on: "I guess I'd be more tired in your position."

"Oh you know I'm never tired. And now," said Rosanna, "I'm too interested."

"Well then, so am I. Only for me it ain't a position."

His daughter still hovered with her vague look about. "Well, if it's one for me I feel it's a good one. I mean it's the right one."

Mr. Gaw shook his little foot with renewed intensity, but his irony was not gay. "The right one isn't always a good one. But ain't the question what his is going to be?"

"Mr. Fielder's? Why, of course," said Rosanna quietly. "That's the whole interest."

"Well then you've got to fix it."

"I consider that I have fixed it—I mean if we can hold out."

"Well"—and Mr. Gaw shook on—"I guess I can. It's pleasant here," he went on, "even if it is funny."

"Funny?" his daughter echoed—yet inattentively, for she had become aware of another person, a middle-aged woman, but with neatly-kept hair already grizzled and in a white dress covered with a large white apron, who stood at the nearest opening of the house. "Here we are, you see, Miss Mumby—but any news?" Miss Gaw was instantly eager.

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Rh of Havsgaard," Freyja becomes the "Maid of Fröjeborg," etc. The humor of the original poem has been preserved in the ballad in a fresh and charming manner. "Young Sveidal" is a very interesting paraphrase of an ancient poem, of which a few fragments have been preserved in the two Edda songs, "Gróugaldr" and "Fjölsvinnsmál. In the form in which these songs are preserved in the Edda, and which they accordingly must have assumed before they were committed to writing in that country, they appear as two distinct poems which are in no way related to each other; but the ballad furnishes conclusive evidence of their original unity, and also contributes in many ways to a better understanding of these obscure lays on which it is based. The obscure ballad, Svend Vonved, which we possess only in a very imperfect form, also points, both in its general structure and in many of its details, to the mythical poetry as its source. We are not able, as was the case in the other ballads, to point to some particular poem of antiquity as its foundation, but in all probability it is based on some heathen religious poem which has been lost.

Of the heroic poetry of antiquity we also find several more or less distinct traces in the popular ballads. The whole group of songs which are designated by the term "Heldenlieder" (heroic lays) in German, constitute one class, in which the heroic ideas inherited from the past are blended with the cosmic views of the middle age. That powerful, oftentimes grotesque, imagination which we constantly meet with in many of the ballads and which may properly be compared with that which we find in many of the popular tales and legends of the North, also has its root in the heathen age. But the popular ballads are also related to the poetry of antiquity in respect to contents, and we discover in them many of the myths and mythic groups which served as the basis of the

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THE IVORY TOWER lady of the apron, who was clearly well affected to the speaker.

This young woman flushed for pleasure. "Oh how splendid! But when did he come?"

"Early this morning—by the New York boat. I was up at five, to change with Miss Ruddle, and there of a sudden were his wheels. He seems so nice!" Miss Mumby beamed.

Rosanna's interest visibly rose, though she was prompt to explain it. "Why it's because he's nice! And he has seen him?"

"He's seeing him now—alone. For five minutes. Not all at once." But Miss Mumby was visibly serene.

This made Miss Gaw rejoice. "I'm not afraid. It will do him good. It has got to!" she finely declared.

Miss Mumby was so much at ease that she could even sanction the joke. "More good than the strain of waiting. They're quite satisfied." Rosanna knew these judges for Doctor Root and Doctor Hatch, and felt the support of her friend's firm freshness. "So we can hope," this authority concluded.

"Well, let my daughter run it—!" Abel Gaw had got up as if this change in the situation qualified certain proprieties, but turned his small sharpness to Miss Mumby, who had at first produced in him no change of posture. "Well, if he couldn't stand me I suppose it was because he knows me—and 14


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THE IVORY TOWER doesn't know this other man. May Mr. Fielder prove acceptable!" he added, stepping off the verandah to the path. But as that left Rosanna's share in the interest still apparently unlimited he spoke again. "Is it going to make you settle over here?"

This mild irony determined her at once joining him, and they took leave together of their friend. "Oh I feel it's right now!" She smiled back at Miss Mumby, whose agitation of a confirmatory hand before disappearing as she had come testified to the excellence of the understanding between the ladies, and presently was trailing her light vague draperies over the grass beside her father. They might have been taken to resemble as they moved together a big ship staying its course to allow its belittled tender to keep near, and the likeness grew when after a minute Mr. Gaw himself stopped to address his daughter a question. He had, it was again marked, so scant a range of intrinsic tone that he had to resort for emphasis or point to some other scheme of signs—this surely also of no great richness, but expressive of his possibilities when once you knew him. "Is there any reason for your not telling me why you're so worked up?"

His companion, as she paused for accommodation, showed him a large flat grave face in which the general intention of deference seemed somehow to confess that it was often at the mercy—and perhaps most in this particular relation—of such an inward 15


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THE IVORY TOWER habit of the far excursion as could but incorrigibly qualify for Rosanna Gaw certain of the forms of attention, certain of the necessities of manner. She was, sketchily speaking, so much higher-piled a person than her father that the filial attitude in her suffered at the best from the occasional air of her having to come down to him. You would have guessed that she was not a person to cultivate that air; and perhaps even if very acute would have guessed some other things bearing on the matter from the little man's careful way with her. This pair exhibited there in the great light of the summer Sunday morning more than one of the essential, or perhaps the rather finally constituted, conditions of their intercourse. Here was a parent who clearly appealed to nobody in the world but his child, and a child who condescended to nobody in the world but her parent; and this with the anomaly of a constant care not to be too humble on one side and an equal one not to be too proud on the other. Rosanna, her powerful exposed arm raised to her broad shoulder, slowly made her heavy parasol revolve, flinging with it a wide shadow that enclosed them together, for their question and answer, as in a great bestreamered tent. "Do I strike you as worked up? Why I've tried to keep as quiet about it as I possibly could—as one does when one wants a thing so tremendously much."

His eyes had been raised to her own, but after she 16


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114 ancient lays. This is particularly the case with the Niblung story, which is scattered thoughout the North and Norway, and has furnished the materials for several of the finest songs in the Elder Edda, for the Volsunga Saga, for the Vilkina Saga, for the Niebelungen Lied, which is based on lost German popular songs; and finally, for the four Danish ballads on Sivard Snaresvend, as Sigurd the Volsung here is called. The same applies to the heroic tradition about King Dietrich of Bern (Theodoric of Verona) and his warriors, a story which is known throughout Gothdom, and which is the subject of seven Danish ballads. These Dietrich ballads are based on German songs that were early imported into the North, while some few of the Sivard ballads give the northern version of the story, and, indeed, partly in its original form and partly with the changes caused by the lapse of time. Among the ballads presenting purely Norse themes, special mention must be made of the one about Aage and Else; about the knight who, after his death, returns to his bride, called from his grave by the intensity of her grief. In this ballad we recognize the close of the second lay of Helge Hundingsbane, in a Christian and romantic dress, it is true, and applied to entirely different persons, but the ideas in the ballad are unquestionably the same as those in the Edda poem. The celebrated song, famous throughout the North, of the faithful love of Harbard and Signe—a love which brought death to both of them, for be must expiate it on the gallows, while she perishes in the burning chamber which she has herself set on fire—is a rendering of a world-old story which doubtless had been the theme of many a song in antiquity. Finally, we have a number of ballads relating to traditions with which we are not acquainted, but which, according to their entire character, belong to the olden time. This is certainly true of the weird ballad of the Sword of the Avenger. In it blood revenge is painted in most powerful colors, and the cruelty of the sword is to such a degree personified, that the latter continues to rage in the wildest manner, until the master of


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THE IVORY TOWER had said this in her perfunctory way they sank as from a sense of shyness and might have rested for a little on one of their tent-pegs. "Well, daughter, that's just what I want to understand—your personal motive."

She gave a sigh for this, a strange uninforming sigh. "Ah father, 'my personal motives'!"

With this she might have walked on, but when he barred the way it was as if she could have done so but by stepping on him. "I don't complain of your personal motives—I want you to have all you're entitled to and should like to know who's entitled to more. But couldn't you have a reason once in a while for letting me know what some of your reasons are?"

Her decent blandness dropped on him again, and she had clearly this time come further to meet him. "You've always wanted me to have things I don't care for—though really when you've made a great point of it I've often tried. But want me now to have this." And then as he watched her again to learn what "this," with the visibly rare importance she attached to it, might be: "To make up to a person for a wrong I once did him."

"You wronged the man who has come?"

"Oh dreadfully!" Rosanna said with great sweetness.

He evidently held that any notice taken of anyone, to whatever effect, by this great daughter of his was nothing less than an honour done, and 17


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Rh the sword invokes the help of God in order to make an end to the bloodshed.

In addition to the mythic and heroic ballads there is a large group of songs, the original elements of which must also be sought in pre-Christian times. They are songs of and of, in which we do not find any direct reminiscences of ancient poetry, but rather all that demonology which, under the influence of Christianity, was created on the basis of the heathen religion. The transition from heathendom to Christianity was by no means a sudden and abrupt one. Many traits of the old religion found their way, in a more or less modified form, into the new faith, and it was particularly difficult to get rid of all those beings with which the myth had peopled nature, though the priests put forth every effort to accomplish this end. These beings continued their lives in legends and songs, though under essentially modified conditions; nay, the development of new myths continued on the basis handed down from the heathen times. In the Christian faith nature appeared fallen and corrupted. Accordingly the beings connected with nature must share her fate and be conceived as evil powers, hostile to the salvation of human souls, no matter how good and beneficent the heathen faith might have represented them. The groups and the individual divinities were in the main accepted as the myth-creating fancy had produced them, but they were all relegated to the realm of the devil as beings that a good Christian must under all circumstances shun, and that would cause his perdition if he had any dealings with them. The gods whose memory had been preserved became wild, damned spirits, the friendly and luminous forms of the elves became wanton, faithless beings, celebrating their nightly dances and stealing the senses of any knight who might chance to be a spectator. They make him oblivious to everything, and he forfeits his own soul. But the ingenious dwarfs which, in the olden time had been conceived as beings of an inferior order, but still upon the


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THE IVORY TOWER probably overdone; so what preposterous "wrong" could count? The worst he could think of was still but a sign of her greatness. "You wouldn't have him round?"

"Oh that would have been nothing!" she laughed; and this time she sailed on again.

 II

found him again after luncheon shaking his little foot from the depths of a piazza chair, but now on their own scene and at a point where this particular feature of it, the cool spreading verandah, commanded the low green cliff and a part of the immediate approach to the house from the seaward side. She left him to the only range of thought of which he was at present capable—she was so perfectly able to follow it; and it had become for that matter an old story that as he never opened a book, nor sought a chance for talk, nor took a step of exercise, nor gave in any manner a sign of an unsatisfied want, the extent of his vacancy, a detachment in which there just breathed a hint of the dryly invidious, might thus remain unbroken for hours. She knew what he was waiting for, and that if she hadn't been there to see him he would take his way across to the other house again, where the plea of solicitude for his old friend's state put him at his ease and where, 18


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United States v. Atlantic Research Corp.

Sections 107(a) and 113(f) of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 allow private parties to recover expenses associated with cleaning up contaminated sites. Section 107(a) defines four categories of potentially responsible parties (PRPs) and makes them liable for, among other things, "(A) all costs of removal or remedial action incurred by the United States Government or a State or an Indian tribe not inconsistent with the national contingency plan" and "(B) any other necessary costs of response incurred by any other person consistent with [such] plan," §§ 107(a)(4)(A)–(B). Originally, some courts interpreted § 107(a)(4)(B) as providing a cause of action for a private party to recover voluntarily incurred response costs and to seek contribution after having been sued. However, after the enactment of § 113(f), which authorizes one PRP to sue another for contribution, many courts held it to be the exclusive remedy for PRPs. In Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Aviall Services, Inc., 543 U.S. 157, 161, this Court held that a private party could seek contribution under § 113(f) only after being sued under § 106 or § 107(a).

After respondent Atlantic Research cleaned up a Government site it leased and contaminated while doing Government work, it sued the Government to recover some of its costs under, as relevant here, § 107(a). The District Court dismissed the case, but the Eighth Circuit reversed, holding that § 113(f) does not provide the exclusive remedy for recovering cleanup costs and that § 107(a)(4)(B) provided a cause of action to any person other than those permitted to sue under § 107(a)(4)(A).

Held: Because § 107(a)(4)(B)'s plain terms allow a PRP to recover costs from other PRPs, the statute provides Atlantic Research with a cause of action. Pp. 134–141.

(a) Applying the maxim that statutes must "be read as a whole," King v. St. Vincent's Hospital, 502 U.S. 215, 221, subparagraph (B)'s language can be understood only with reference to subparagraph (A). The provisions are adjacent and have similar structures, and the text denotes a relationship between them. Subparagraph (B)'s phrase "other necessary costs" refers to and differentiates the relevant costs from those listed in subparagraph (A). Thus, it is natural to read the phrase "any other person" by referring to the immediately preceding subpara- [p129] graph (A). Accepting the Government's interpretation—that "any other person" refers only to a person not identified as a PRP in §§ 107(a)(1)–(4)—would destroy the symmetry of subparagraphs (A) and (B) and render subparagraph (B) internally confusing. Moreover, because the statute defines PRPs so broadly as to sweep in virtually all persons likely to incur cleanup costs, accepting that interpretation would reduce the number of potential plaintiffs to almost zero, rendering subparagraph (B) a dead letter. Pp. 134–137.

(b) Contrary to the Government's argument, this interpretation will not create friction between §§ 107(a) and 113(f). Their two clearly distinct remedies complement each other: Section 113(f)(1) authorizes a contribution action to PRPs with common liability stemming from an action instituted under § 106 or § 107(a), while § 107(a) permits cost recovery (as distinct from contribution) by a private party that has itself incurred cleanup costs. Thus, at least in the case of reimbursement, a PRP cannot choose § 107(a)'s longer statute of limitations for recovery actions over § 113(f)'s shorter one for contribution claims. Similarly, a PRP could not avoid § 113(f)'s equitable distribution of reimbursement costs among PRPs by instead choosing to impose joint and several liability under § 107(a). That choice of remedies simply does not exist, and in any event, a defendant PRP in a § 107(a) suit could blunt any such distribution by filing a § 113(f) counterclaim. Finally, permitting PRPs to seek recovery under § 107(a) will not eviscerate § 113(f)(2), which prohibits § 113(f) contribution claims against "[a] person who has resolved its liability to the United States or a State in an administrative or judicially approved settlement " Although that settlement bar does not by its terms protect against § 107(a) cost-recovery liability, a district court applying traditional equity rules would undoubtedly consider any prior settlement in the liability calculus; the settlement bar continues to provide significant protection from contribution suits by PRPs that have inequitably reimbursed costs incurred by another party; and settlement carries the inherent benefit of finally resolving liability as to the United States or a State. Pp. 137–141.

459 F.3d 827, affirmed.

THOMAS, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Deputy Solicitor General Hungar argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Clement, Acting Assistant Attorney General McKeown, Kannon K. Shanmugam, Ronald M. Spritzer, and Ellen J. Durkee.

[p130] Owen Thomas Armstrong, Jr., argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was Frank L. Steeves.

Jay D. Geck, Deputy Solicitor General of Washington, argued the cause for the State of Washington et al. as amici curiae urging affirmance. With him on the brief were Robert M. McKenna, Attorney General, Maureen Hart, Solicitor General, and Michael L. Dunning, Assistant Attorney General, Linda Singer, Acting Attorney General of the District of Columbia, Salvador J. Antonetti Stutts, Solicitor General of Puerto Rico, and the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Troy King of Alabama, Talis J. Colberg of Alaska, Dustin McDaniel of Arkansas, John W. Suthers of Colorado, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Bill McCollum of Florida, Thurbert E. Baker of Georgia, Mark J. Bennett of Hawaii, Lawrence G. Wasden of Idaho, Lisa Madigan of Illinois, Steve Carter of Indiana, Tom Miller of Iowa, Gregory D. Stumbo of Kentucky, Charles C. Foti, Jr., of Louisiana, Steven Rowe of Maine, Douglas F. Gansler of Maryland, Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, Michael A. Cox of Michigan, Lori Swanson of Minnesota, Jim Hood of Mississippi, Jeremiah W. Nixon of Missouri, Mike McGrath of Montana, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Kelly A. Ayotte of New Hampshire, Stuart Rabner of New Jersey, Gary K. King of New Mexico, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Wayne Stenehjem of North Dakota, Marc Dann of Ohio, Hardy Myers of Oregon, Patrick Lynch of Rhode Island, Robert E. Cooper, Jr., of Tennessee, Greg Abbott of Texas, Mark L. Shurtleff of Utah, William H. Sorrell of Vermont, and J. B. Van Hollen of Wisconsin.


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116 whole as the friends of men, were in the middle age to some extent classified with the giants, the foes of mankind, and like the latter they were turned into wizards and mountain-spirits, who as a rule are friendly neither to God nor to men, though some of them, for instance the gnomes, the nisses, the underground spirits and the like, were regarded in a somewhat more favorable light. All these ideas, which are most intimately connected with the faith of the heathen age, we rediscover in a large number of the ballads. It will be sufficient to mention "Elveskud," the ballad concerning Olaf the Knight, who through his encounter with the elf-maid forfeits his life; the ballad which tells of Bösmer the Knight in Alfheim, who is enticed into the mountain, where he is made to forget all that was dear to him; the ballads of the merman Rosmer; of Germand Gladensvend (both of which remind us of the grand conceptions the ancients had of the giants), and of Agnete and the merman, etc.

In all these ballads, and as a rule in all the popular poetry of the middle age, we find in addition to these echoes from antiquity a new element which was entirely foreign to the ancient time, namely a, which is characteristic of the cosmic conception prevailing throughout the middle age. In the ballad-world imagination reigns almost supreme, and lends a peculiar color to all forms and ideas. Hence it was that this poetry acquired so great importance, and was, so to speak, regenerated, when in the beginning of this century romantic poetry became predominant, and borrowed its material to so great an extent from the popular poetry. In the North people are generally familiar with this popular poetry, not only from the original ballads themselves, but perhaps especially from the poems which Oelenschlæger and other northern poets of modern times have produced in imitation of them.

The same points of contact between the middle age and the heathen time appear even in a more marked degree in the numerous ballads which tell of metamorphoses and of incan-


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United States v. Atlantic Research Corp./Opinion of the Court

[p131] JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

Two provisions of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA)—§§ 107(a) and 113(f)—allow private parties to recover expenses associated with cleaning up contaminated sites. 42 U.S.C. §§ 9607(a), 9613(f). In this case, we must decide a question left open in Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Aviall Services, Inc., 543 U.S. 157, 161 (2004): whether § 107(a) provides so-called potentially responsible parties (PRPs), 42 U.S.C. §§ 9607(a)(1)–(4), with a cause of action to recover costs from other PRPs. We hold that it does.

A
Courts have frequently grappled with whether and how PRPs may recoup CERCLA-related costs from other PRPs. The questions lie at the intersection of two statutory provisions—CERCLA §§ 107(a) and 113(f). Section 107(a) de- [p132] fines four categories of PRPs, 94 Stat. 2781, 42 U.S.C. §§ 9607(a)(1)-(4), and makes them liable for, among other things:

"(A) all costs of removal or remedial action incurred by the United States Government or a State or an Indian tribe not inconsistent with the national contingency plan; [and]

"(B) any other necessary costs of response incurred by any other person consistent with the national contingency plan." §§ 9607(a)(4)(A)–(B).

Enacted as part of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA), 100 Stat. 1613, § 113(f) authorizes one PRP to sue another for contribution in certain circumstances. 42 U.S.C. § 9613(f).

Prior to the advent of § 113(f)'s express contribution right, some courts held that § 107(a)(4)(B) provided a cause of action for a private party to recover voluntarily incurred response costs and to seek contribution after having been sued. See Cooper Industries, supra, at 161–162, 125 S.Ct. 577 (collecting cases); Key Tronic Corp. v. United States, 511 U.S. 809, 816, n.7 (1994) (same). After SARA's enactment, however, some Courts of Appeals believed it necessary to "direc[t] traffic between" § 107(a) and § 113(f). 459 F.3d 827, 832 (CA8 2006) (case below). As a result, many Courts of Appeals held that § 113(f) was the exclusive remedy for PRPs. See Cooper Industries, supra, at 169 (collecting cases). But as courts prevented PRPs from suing under § 107(a), they expanded § 113(f) to allow PRPs to seek "contribution" even in the absence of a suit under § 106 or § 107(a). Aviall Servs., Inc. v. [p133] Cooper Industries, Inc., 312 F.3d 677, 681 (CA5 2002) (en banc).

In Cooper Industries, we held that a private party could seek contribution from other liable parties only after having been sued under § 106 or § 107(a). 543 U.S., at 161. This narrower interpretation of § 113(f) caused several Courts of Appeals to reconsider whether PRPs have rights under § 107(a)(4)(B), an issue we declined to address in Cooper Industries. Id., at 168. After revisiting the issue, some courts have permitted § 107(a) actions by PRPs. See Consolidated Edison Co. of N.Y. v. UGI Utilities, Inc., 423 F.3d 90 (CA2 2005); Metropolitan Water Reclamation Dist. of Greater Chicago v. North American Galvanizing & Coatings, Inc., 473 F.3d 824 (CA7 2007). However, at least one court continues to hold that § 113(f) provides the exclusive cause of action available to PRPs. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. v. United States, 460 F.3d 515 (CA3 2006). Today, we resolve this issue.

B
In this case, respondent Atlantic Research leased property at the Shumaker Naval Ammunition Depot, a facility operated by the Department of Defense. At the site, Atlantic Research retrofitted rocket motors for petitioner United States. Using a high-pressure water spray, Atlantic Research removed pieces of propellant from the motors. It then burned the propellant pieces. Some of the resultant wastewater and burned fuel contaminated soil and ground water at the site. Atlantic Research cleaned the site at its own expense and then sought to recover some of its costs by suing the United States under both §§ 107(a) and 113(f). After our decision in Cooper Industries foreclosed relief under § 113(f), Atlantic Research amended its complaint to seek relief under § 107(a) and federal common law. The United States moved to dismiss, arguing that § 107(a) does not allow PRPs (such as [p134] Atlantic Research) to recover costs. The District Court granted the motion to dismiss, relying on a case decided prior to our decision in Cooper Industries, Dico, Inc. v. Amoco Oil Co., 340 F.3d 525 (CA8 2003).

The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed. Recognizing that Cooper Industries undermined the reasoning of its prior precedent, 459 F.3d, at 830, n.4, the Court of Appeals joined the Second and Seventh Circuits in holding that § 113(f) does not provide "the exclusive route by which [PRPs] may recover cleanup costs." Id., at 834 (citing Consolidated Edison Co., supra). The court reasoned that § 107(a)(4)(B) authorized suit by any person other than the persons permitted to sue under § 107(a)(4)(A). 459 F.3d, at 835. Accordingly, it held that § 107(a)(4)(B) provides a cause of action to Atlantic Research. To prevent perceived conflict between §§ 107(a)(4)(B) and 113(f)(1), the Court of Appeals reasoned that PRPs that "have been subject to §§ 106 or 107 enforcement actions are still required to use § 113, thereby ensuring its continued vitality." Id., at 836–837. We granted certiorari, 549 U.S. 1177 (2007), and now affirm.

A
The parties' dispute centers on what "other person[s]" may sue under § 107(a)(4)(B). The Government argues that "any other person" refers to any person not identified as a PRP in §§ 107(a)(1)–(4). In other words, subparagraph (B) per- [p135] mits suit only by non-PRPs and thus bars Atlantic Research's claim. Atlantic Research counters that subparagraph (B) takes its cue from subparagraph (A), not the earlier paragraphs (1)–(4). In accord with the Court of Appeals, Atlantic Research believes that subparagraph (B) provides a cause of action to anyone except the United States, a State, or an Indian tribe—the persons listed in subparagraph (A). We agree with Atlantic Research.

Statutes must "be read as a whole." King v. St. Vincent's Hospital, 502 U.S. 215, 221 (1991). Applying that maxim, the language of subparagraph (B) can be understood only with reference to subparagraph (A). The provisions are adjacent and have remarkably similar structures. Each concerns certain costs that have been incurred by certain entities and that bear a specified relationship to the national contingency plan. Bolstering the structural link, the text also denotes a relationship between the two provisions. By using the phrase "other necessary costs," subparagraph (B) refers to and differentiates the relevant costs from those listed in subparagraph (A).

In light of the relationship between the subparagraphs, it is natural to read the phrase "any other person" by referring to the immediately preceding subparagraph (A), which permits suit only by the United States, a State, or an Indian tribe. The phrase "any other person" therefore means any person other than those three. See 42 U.S.C. § 9601(21) [p136] defining "person" to include the United States and the various States). Consequently, the plain language of subparagraph (B) authorizes cost-recovery actions by any private party, including PRPs. See Key Tronic, 511 U.S., at 818 (stating in dictum that § 107 "impliedly authorizes private parties to recover cleanup costs from other PRP[s]" (emphasis added)).

The Government's interpretation makes little textual sense. In subparagraph (B), the phrase "any other necessary costs" and the phrase "any other person" both refer to antecedents—"costs" and "person[s]"—located in some previous statutory provision. Although "any other necessary costs" clearly references the costs in subparagraph (A), the Government would inexplicably interpret "any other person" to refer not to the persons listed in subparagraph (A) but to the persons listed as PRPs in paragraphs (1)–(4). Nothing in the text of § 107(a)(4)(B) suggests an intent to refer to antecedents located in two different statutory provisions. Reading the statute in the manner suggested by the Government would destroy the symmetry of §§ 107(a)(4)(A) and (B) and render subparagraph (B) internally confusing.

Moreover, the statute defines PRPs so broadly as to sweep in virtually all persons likely to incur cleanup costs. Hence, if PRPs do not qualify as "any other person" for purposes of § 107(a)(4)(B), it is unclear what private party would. The Government posits that § 107(a)(4)(B) authorizes relief for "innocent" private parties—for instance, a landowner whose land has been contaminated by another. But even parties not responsible for contamination may fall within the broad definitions of PRPs in §§ 107(a)(1)–(4). See 42 U.S.C. § 9607(a)(1) (listing "the owner and operator of a facility" as a PRP); see also United States v. Alcan Aluminum Corp., 315 F.3d 179, 184 (CA2 2003) ("CERCLA § 9607 is a strict liability statute"). The Government's reading of the text logically precludes all PRPs, innocent or not, from recovering cleanup costs. Accordingly, accepting the Government's [p137] interpretation would reduce the number of potential plaintiffs to almost zero, rendering § 107(a)(4)(B) a dead letter. See Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 219 U.S. 467, 475 (1911) ("We must have regard to all the words used by Congress, and as far as possible give effect to them").

According to the Government, our interpretation suffers from the same infirmity because it causes the phrase "any other person" to duplicate work done by other text. In the Government's view, the phrase "any other necessary costs" "already precludes governmental entities from recovering under" § 107(a)(4)(B). Brief for United States 20. Even assuming the Government is correct, it does not alter our conclusion. The phrase "any other person" performs a significant function simply by clarifying that subparagraph (B) excludes the persons enumerated in subparagraph (A). In any event, our hesitancy to construe statutes to render language superfluous does not require us to avoid surplusage at all costs. It is appropriate to tolerate a degree of surplusage rather than adopt a textually dubious construction that threatens to render the entire provision a nullity.

B
The Government also argues that our interpretation will create friction between §§ 107(a) and 113(f), the very harm courts of appeals have previously tried to avoid. In particular, the Government maintains that our interpretation, by offering PRPs a choice between §§ 107(a) and 113(f), effectively allows PRPs to circumvent § 113(f)'s shorter statute [p138] of limitations. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 9613(g)(2)–(3). Furthermore, the Government argues, PRPs will eschew equitable apportionment under § 113(f) in favor of joint and several liability under § 107(a). Finally, the Government contends that our interpretation eviscerates the settlement bar set forth in § 113(f)(2).

We have previously recognized that §§ 107(a) and 113(f) provide two "clearly distinct" remedies. Cooper Industries, 543 U.S., at 163, n.3. "CERCLA provide[s] for a right to cost recovery in certain circumstances, § 107(a), and separate rights to contribution in other circumstances, §§ 113(f)(1), 113(f)(3)(B)." Id., at 163 (emphasis added). The Government, however, uses the word "contribution" as if it were synonymous with any apportionment of expenses among PRPs. Brief for United States 33, n.14 ("Contribution is merely a form of cost recovery, not a wholly independent type of relief"); see also, e.g., Pinal Creek Group v. Newmont Mining Corp., 118 F.3d 1298, 1301 (CA9 1997) ("Because all PRPs are liable under the statute, a claim by one PRP against another PRP necessarily is for contribution"). This imprecise usage confuses the complementary yet distinct nature of the rights established in §§ 107(a) and 113(f).

Section 113(f) explicitly grants PRPs a right to contribution. Contribution is defined as the "tortfeasor's right to collect from others responsible for the same tort after the tortfeasor has paid more than his or her proportionate share, the shares being determined as a percentage of fault." Black's Law Dictionary 353 (8th ed. 2004). Nothing in § 113(f) suggests that Congress used the term "contribution" in anything other than this traditional sense. The statute authorizes a PRP to seek contribution "during or following" a suit under § 106 or § 107(a). 42 U.S.C. § 9613(f)(1). Thus, § 113(f)(1) permits suit before or after the establish- [p139] ment of common liability. In either case, a PRP's right to contribution under § 113(f)(1) is contingent upon an inequitable distribution of common liability among liable parties.

By contrast, § 107(a) permits recovery of cleanup costs but does not create a right to contribution. A private party may recover under § 107(a) without any establishment of liability to a third party. Moreover, § 107(a) permits a PRP to recover only the costs it has "incurred" in cleaning up a site. 42 U.S.C. § 9607(a)(4)(B). When a party pays to satisfy a settlement agreement or a court judgment, it does not incur its own costs of response. Rather, it reimburses other parties for costs that those parties incurred.

Accordingly, the remedies available in §§ 107(a) and 113(f) complement each other by providing causes of action "to persons in different procedural circumstances." Consolidated Edison, 423 F.3d, at 99; see also E.I. DuPont de Nemours, 460 F.3d, at 548 (Sloviter, J., dissenting). Section 113(f)(1) authorizes a contribution action to PRPs with common liability stemming from an action instituted under § 106 or § 107(a). And § 107(a) permits cost recovery (as distinct from contribution) by a private party that has itself incurred cleanup costs. Hence, a PRP that pays money to satisfy a settlement agreement or a court judgment may pursue § 113(f) contribution. But by reimbursing response costs paid by other parties, the PRP has not incurred its own costs of response and therefore cannot recover under § 107(a). As a result, though eligible to seek contribution under § 113(f)(1), the PRP cannot simultaneously seek to recover the same expenses under § 107(a). Thus, at least in the case of reimbursement, the PRP cannot choose the 6-year statute of limitations for cost-recovery actions over the shorter limitations period for § 113(f) contribution claims.

[p140] For similar reasons, a PRP could not avoid § 113(f)'s equitable distribution of reimbursement costs among PRPs by instead choosing to impose joint and several liability on another PRP in an action under § 107(a). The choice of remedies simply does not exist. In any event, a defendant PRP in such a § 107(a) suit could blunt any inequitable distribution of costs by filing a § 113(f) counterclaim. 459 F.3d, at 835; see also Consolidated Edison, supra, at 100, n.9 (collecting cases). Resolution of a § 113(f) counterclaim would necessitate the equitable apportionment of costs among the liable parties, including the PRP that filed the § 107(a) action. 42 U.S.C. § 9613(f)(1) ("In resolving contribution claims, the court may allocate response costs among liable parties using such equitable factors as the court determines are appropriate").

Finally, permitting PRPs to seek recovery under § 107(a) will not eviscerate the settlement bar set forth in § 113(f)(2). That provision prohibits § 113(f) contribution claims against "[a] person who has resolved its liability to the United States or a State in an administrative or judicially approved settlement " 42 U.S.C. § 9613(f)(2). The settlement bar does not by its terms protect against cost-recovery liability under § 107(a). For several reasons, we doubt this supposed loophole would discourage settlement. First, as stated above, a defendant PRP may trigger equitable appor- [p141] tionment by filing a § 113(f) counterclaim. A district court applying traditional rules of equity would undoubtedly consider any prior settlement as part of the liability calculus. Cf. 4 Restatement (Second) of Torts § 886A(2), p. 337 (1977) ("No tortfeasor can be required to make contribution beyond his own equitable share of the liability"). Second, the settlement bar continues to provide significant protection from contribution suits by PRPs that have inequitably reimbursed the costs incurred by another party. Third, settlement carries the inherent benefit of finally resolving liability as to the United States or a State.

III
Because the plain terms of § 107(a)(4)(B) allow a PRP to recover costs from other PRPs, the statute provides Atlantic Research with a cause of action. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

It is so ordered.


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 affirmed, to truths or principles to which no abstract terms or combinations of terms can ever be adequate.

Yet there are some purely technical conditions in submitting to which the spontaneous language of feeling, or the severe utterances of abstract truth, can hardly be granted to stand wholly exempt from a real disadvantage. There may, indeed, be approvable reasons, warranting the employment of such artificial means—albeit they do involve a disadvantage; nevertheless, where we find it existing, it must be accepted as it is—it is a conditioning of Thought which, when it is admitted on occasions the most serious, indicates the extent of that adaptation of the Divine to the human of which we can never lose sight without falling into perplexities.

With the exception of two or three lines—cited by St. Paul from the Greek poets—the Scriptures of the New Testament are everywhere prosaic in form:—the intention of the writer or speaker is conveyed always in the most direct manner which the rules of language admit of—figurative terms are employed where none other are available. Thought is here unconditioned, so far as it can be—the subject-matter, considered. Not so in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Nearly a half of the entire mass, or, in the proportion of twenty-two to twenty-five, the Hebrew writings are not merely poetic, as to their diction, but they are metrical in form;—or we


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 should better say—the Thought of the writer is subjected to rules of structure that are in the highest degree artificial. This fact—well understood as now it is—escapes the notice of the reader of modern versions; albeit, when once it has been explained to a reader of ordinary intelligence, he easily perceives it—wherever it is actually found.

We have here named what is about the proportion of prose to verse throughout the Old Testament; but, in truth, if those parts of the historical books are set off from the account which are genealogical merely, and those also which are repetitive or redundant, and those, moreover, which barely, if at all, convey any religious meaning, then it will appear that very much more than a half of the Canon of Scripture in the Hebrew takes this latter form; or, as we say, is conditioned in conformity with artificial rules of structure.

Of this structure, which of late has been carefully set forth, and illustrated, even in popular works, there can be no need in this place to give any account in detail. The fact of its existence is all we have to do with; and this, briefly stated, is this—that each separate utterance of religious thought—theological, ethical, or devotional—is thrown into an antithetical form, so making up a couplet, or a triplet; or an integral verse in four, five, or six measured lines. The second line of the two is often a repetition only of the first, in other terms:—often it is an antithetic utterance of the same


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 thought:—sometimes it is an illustrative supplement to it:—sometimes an exceptive caution; yet everywhere the ode or lyrical composition, regarded as a whole, is thus built up of members—limbs—apposed, one to the other—balancing one the other, and finding their reason, not simply in the requirements of Thought—uttered in the prosaic form—but, beyond this, in the rules or the usages of an arbitrary system of composition.

Then, besides this kind of structure, many of the odes of the Hebrew Scriptures obey a law of alliteration—which is still more arbitrary, inasmuch as it requires the first word of each verse, in a certain number of verses, to begin with the same letter, and these in alphabetic order. Any one who will try for himself a few experiments, in English, will find that, in yielding obedience to requirements of this kind. Thought must take a turn, or must very greatly mould itself to a fashion which it would not otherwise have chosen. Thought submits to a process of conditioning which intimately affects it, if not in substance, yet in its modes of utterance. The second verse in Milton's Christmas Hymn stands thus:—