Let us now
examine in what manner the judicial authority is to be distributed
between the supreme and the inferior courts of the Union.
The Supreme Court is to be invested with original jurisdiction, only "in
cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and
those in which A STATE shall be a party." Public ministers of every
class are the immediate representatives of their sovereigns. All
questions in which they are concerned are so directly connected with the
public peace, that, as well for the preservation of this, as out of
respect to the sovereignties they represent, it is both expedient and
proper that such questions should be submitted in the first instance to
the highest judicatory of the nation. Though consuls have not in
strictness a diplomatic character, yet as they are the public agents of
the nations to which they belong, the same observation is in a great
measure applicable to them. In cases in which a State might happen to be
a party, it would ill suit its dignity to be turned over to an inferior
tribunal.
Though it may rather be a digression from the immediate subject of this
paper, I shall take occasion to mention here a supposition which has
excited some alarm upon very mistaken grounds.
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