and laws of the United States, would itself suggest the propriety of vesting in some single tribunal, the power of deciding in the last resort, all cases in which they are involved.

"We are not restrained, then, by the political relations between the general and state governments, from construing the words of the Constitution, defining the judicial power, in their true sense. We are not bound to construe them more restrictively than they naturally import.

"They give to the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction, in all cases arising under the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States. The words are broad enough to comprehend all cases of this description, in whatever court they may be decided. In expounding them, we may be permitted to take into view, those considerations to which courts have always allowed great weight in the exposition of laws.

"The framers of the Constitution would naturally examine the state of things existing at the time; and their work sufficiently attests that they did so. All acknowledge that they were convened for the purpose of strengthening the confederation by enlarging the powers of the government, and by giving efficacy to those which it before possessed, but could not exercise. They inform us themselves, in the instrument they presented to the American public, that one of its objects was to form a more perfect union. Under such circumstances, we certainly should not expect to find, in that instrument, a diminution of the powers of the actual government.

"Previous to the adoption of the confederation, congress established courts which received appeals in prize causes decided in the courts of the respective states. This power of the government, to establish tribunals for these appeals, was thought consistent with, and was founded on, its political relations with the states. These courts exercised appellate jurisdiction over those cases decided in the state courts, to which the judicial power of the federal government extended.

"The confederation gave to congress the power of 'establishing courts for receiving and determining finally appeals in all cases of captures."

"This power was uniformly construed to authorize those courts to receive appeals from the sentences of state courts, and to affirm or reverse them. State tribunals are not mentioned; but this clause in the confederation necessarily comprises them. Yet the relation between the general and state governments was much weaker and much more lax, under the confederation than under the present Constitution; and the states being much more completely sovereign, their institutions were much more independent.

"The convention which framed the Constitution, on turning their attention to the judicial power, found it limited to a few objects, but with respect to some of those objects extending in its appellate form to the judgments of the state courts. They extended it, among other objects, to all cases arising under the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States; and in a subsequent clause declare, that, in such cases, the supreme court shall exercise appellate jurisdiction. Nothing seems to be given which would justify the withdrawal of a judgment rendered in a state court on the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States from this appellate jurisdiction.

"Great weight has always been attached to contemporaneous exposition. No question, it is believed, has arisen to which this principle applies more unequivocally than to that now under consideration.

"In discussing the extent of the judicial power, the Federalist says, 'Here another question occurs: what relation would subsist between the national and state courts in these instances of concurrent jurisdiction? I answer, that an appeal would certainly lie from the latter to the supreme court of the United States. The Constitution in direct terms gives an appellate jurisdiction to the supreme court in all the enumerated cases of federal cognizance in which it is not to have an original one, without a single expression to confine its operation to the inferior federal courts. The objects of appeal, not the tribunals from which it is to be made, are alone contemplated. From this circumstance, and from the reason of the thing, it ought to be construed to extend to the state tribunals. Either this must be the case, or the local courts must be excluded from a concurrent jurisdiction in matters of national concern, else the judicial authority of the Union may be eluded at the pleasure of every plaintiff or prosecutor. Neither of these consequences ought, without evident necessity, to be involved; the latter would be entirely inadmissible, as it would defeat some of the most important and avowed purposes of the proposed government, and would essentially embarrass its measures. Nor do I perceive any foundation for such a supposition. Agreeably to the remark already made, the national and state systems are to be regarded as one whole. The courts of the latter will of course be natural auxiliaries to the execution of the laws of the Union, and an appeal from them will as naturally lie to that tribunal which is destined to unite and assimilate the principles of natural justice, and the rules of national decision. The evident aim of the plan of the national convention is, that all the causes of the specified classes shall, for weighty public reasons, receive their original or final determination in the courts of the Union. To confine, therefore, the general expressions which give appellate jurisdiction to the supreme court, to appeals from the subordinate federal courts, instead of allowing their extension to the state courts, would be to abridge the latitude of the terms in subversion of the intent, contrary to every sound rule of interpretation.'

"A contemporaneous exposition of the Constitution, cer

tainly of not less authority than that which has been just cited, is the judiciary act itself. We know that in the congress which passed that act, were many eminent members of the convention which formed the Constitution. Not a single individual so far as is known, supposed that part of the act which gives the supreme court appellate jurisdiction over the judgments of the state courts in the cases therein specified, to be unauthorized by the Constitution.

" While on this part of the argument, it may be also material to observe, that the uniform decisions of this court on the point now under consideration, have been assented to, with a single exception,* by the courts of every state in the Union, whose judgments have been revised. It has been the unwelcome duty of this tribunal to reverse the judgments of many state courts in cases in which the strongest state feelings were engaged. Judges, whose talents and character would grace any bench; to whom a disposition to submit to jurisdiction that is usurped, or to surrender their legitimate powers, will certainly not be imputed, have yielded without hesitation to the authority by which their judgments were reversed, while they perhaps disapproved the judgment of reversal.

"This concurrence of statesmen, of legislators, and of judges, in the same construction of the Constitution, may justly inspire some confidence in that construction."†

In this case, as may have been perceived from the course of reasoning, the appellate jurisdiction was exercised over a state court. In 1824, the consideration of the same question was again thrown on the supreme court, on an appeal from

1

the circuit court of the United States for the district of Ohio, in an equity case.

In the extract we shall also give of the decision pronounced by the chief justice in this case, we shall perceive some further important principles laid down which will be found service, able in a future view of the powers of the United States courts that will be presented to the reader; at the same time we must not be understood to have a design to apply arguments, evidently intended only for cases of a civil nature, further than fair reasoning will justify.

"In support of the clause, in the act incorporating the subscribers to the Bank of the United States, it is said that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, of every well constructed government, are co-extensive with each other. That is, they are potentially co-extensive. The executive department may constitutionally execute every law which the legislature may constitutionally make, and the judicial department may receive from the legislature the power of construing every such law. All governments which are not extremely defective in their organization, must possess within themselves the means of expounding as well as enforcing their own laws. If we examine the Constitution of the United States, we find that its framers kept this political principle in view. The second article vests the whole executive power in the president, and the third declares, that the judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made under their authority.'

"This clause enables the judicial department to receive jurisdiction to the full extent of the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States, when any question respecting them shall assume such a form that the judicial power is capable of acting on it. That power is capable of acting only when the subject is submitted to it by a party who asserts his rights