Opinion of the Court
term, “full costs.” Act of Feb. 3, 1831, §12, 4 Stat. 438–439. That term has appeared in subsequent revisions of the Copyright Act, through the Act’s most recent substantive alterations in 1976. See Act of July 8, 1870, §108, 16 Stat. 215; Copyright Act of 1909, §40, 35 Stat. 1084; Copyright Act of 1976, §505, 90 Stat. 2586.
Oracle argues that English copyright statutes awarding “full costs” allowed the transfer of all expenses of litigation, beyond what was specified in any costs schedule. According to Oracle, Congress necessarily imported that meaning of the term “full costs” into the Copyright Act in 1831. And according to Oracle, that 1831 meaning overrides anything that Congress enacted in any costs statute in 1853 or later.
To begin with, our decision in Crawford Fitting explained that courts should not undertake extensive historical excavation to determine the meaning of costs statutes. We said that §§1821 and 1920 apply regardless of when individual subject-specific costs statutes were enacted. 482 U. S., at 445. The Crawford Fitting principle eliminates the need for that kind of historical analysis and confirms that the Copyright Act’s reference to “full costs” must be interpreted by reference to §§1821 and 1920.
In any event, Oracle’s historical argument fails even on its own terms. Oracle has not persuasively demonstrated that as of 1831, the phrase “full costs” had an established meaning in English or American law that covered more than the full amount of the costs listed in the applicable costs schedule. On the contrary, the federal courts as of 1831 awarded costs in accord with the costs schedule of the relevant state law. See id., at 439−440; Alyeska Pipeline, 421 U. S., at 250. And state laws at the time tended to use the term “full costs” to refer to, among other things, full cost awards as distinguished from the half, double, or
