attention to the judicial power, found it limited to a few objects, but exercised, with respect to some of those objects, in its appellate form, over the judgments of the state courts. They extend 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, and very rightly attached, to contemporaneous exposition. No question, it is believed, has arisen, to which this principle applies more unequivocally, than to that now under consideration.
"The opinion of The Federalist has always been considered, as of great authority. It is a complete commentary on our constitution; and is appealed to by all parties, in the questions, to which that instrument has given birth. Its intrinsic merit entitles it to this high rank; and the part, two of its authors performed in framing the constitution, put it very much in their power to explain the views, with which it was framed. These essays having been published, while the constitution was before the nation, for adoption or rejection, and having been written in answer to objections, founded entirely on the extent of its powers, and on its diminution of state sovereignty, are entitled to the more consideration, where they frankly avow, that the power objected to is given, and defend it.
"In discussing the extent of the judicial power, The Federalist[a 1] 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 to lie 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
- ↑ The Federalist, No. 82.
