The evident aim of
the plan of the 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 giving 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.
But could an appeal be made to lie from the State courts to the
subordinate federal judicatories? This is another of the questions which
have been raised, and of greater difficulty than the former. The
following considerations countenance the affirmative. The plan of the
convention, in the first place, authorizes the national legislature "to
constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court."[2] It declares, in
the next place, that "the JUDICIAL POWER of the United States shall be
vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as Congress
shall ordain and establish"; and it then proceeds to enumerate the cases
to which this judicial power shall extend.
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