To avoid all inconveniencies, it
will be safest to declare generally, that the Supreme Court shall
possess appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact, and that this
jurisdiction shall be subject to such exceptions and regulations as the
national legislature may prescribe. This will enable the government to
modify it in such a manner as will best answer the ends of public
justice and security.
This view of the matter, at any rate, puts it out of all doubt that the
supposed abolition of the trial by jury, by the operation of this
provision, is fallacious and untrue. The legislature of the United
States would certainly have full power to provide, that in appeals to
the Supreme Court there should be no re-examination of facts where they
had been tried in the original causes by juries. This would certainly be
an authorized exception; but if, for the reason already intimated, it
should be thought too extensive, it might be qualified with a limitation
to such causes only as are determinable at common law in that mode of
trial.
The amount of the observations hitherto made on the authority of the
judicial department is this: that it has been carefully restricted to
those causes which are manifestly proper for the cognizance of the
national judicature; that in the partition of this authority a very
small portion of original jurisdiction has been preserved to the Supreme
Court, and the rest consigned to the subordinate tribunals; that the
Supreme Court will possess an appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and
fact, in all the cases referred to them, both subject to any exceptions
and regulations which may be thought advisable; that this appellate
jurisdiction does, in no case, abolish the trial by jury; and that an
ordinary degree of prudence and integrity in the national councils will
insure us solid advantages from the establishment of the proposed
judiciary, without exposing us to any of the inconveniences which have
been predicted from that source.
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