Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/463

apply to the inferior tribunals. These were, therefore, left entirely to the discretion of congress, as to their number, their jurisdiction, and their powers. Experience might, and probably would, show good grounds for varying and modifying them from time to time. It would not only have been unwise, but exceedingly inconvenient, to have fixed the arrangement of these courts in the constitution itself; since congress would have been disabled thereby from adapting them from time to time to the exigencies of the country.^[1] But, whatever may be the extent, to which the power of congress reaches, as to the establishment of inferior tribunals, it is clear from what has been already stated, that all the jurisdiction contemplated by the constitu-

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wisdom of the old world. Speaking on the subject of the necessity of one supreme appellate tribunal he says: "But, lastly, if several courts, co-ordinate to and independent of each other, subsist together in the country, it seems necessary, that the appeals from all of them should meet and terminate in the same judicature; in order, that one supreme tribunal, by whose final sentence all others are bound and concluded, may superintend and preside over the rest. This constitution is necessary for two purposes;—to preserve a uniformity in the decisions of inferior courts, and to maintain to each the proper limits of its jurisdiction. Without a common superior, different courts might establish contradictory rules of adjudication, and the contradiction be final and without remedy; the same question might receive opposite determinations, according as it was brought before one court or another, and the determination in each be ultimate and irreversible, A common appellant jurisdiction prevents or puts an end to this confusion. For when the judgments upon appeals arc consistent, (which may be expected, while it is the same court, which is at last resorted to,) the different courts, from which the appeals are brought will be reduced to a like consistency with one another. Moreover, if questions arise between courts independent of each other, concerning the extent and boundaries of their respective jurisdiction, as each will be desirous of enlarging its own, an authority, which both acknowledge, can alone adjust the controversy. Such a power, therefore, must reside somewhere, lest the rights and repose of the country be distracted by the endless opposition and mutual encroachments of its courts of justice."

1. See 2 Elliot's Debates, 360.