Supreme Court of the United States.
435
1793.
tion was adopted, or at the time the judicial act was passed. Since that time an act of Assembly for such a purpose has been passed in Georgia. But that surely could have no influence in the construction of an act of the Legislature of the United States passed before.
The only principles of law, then, that can be regarded, are those common to all the States. I know of none such, which can affect this case, but those that are derived from what is properly termed “the common law,” a law which I presume is the ground-work of the laws in every State in the Union, and which I consider, so far as it is applicable to the peculiar circumstances of the country, and where no special act of Legislation controuls it, to be in force in each State, as it existed in England, (unaltered by any statute) at the time of the first settlement of the country. The statutes of England that are in force in America differ perhaps in all the States; and, therefore, it is probable the common law in each, is in some respects different. But it is certain that in regard to any common law principle which can influence the question before us no alteration has been made by any statute, which could occasion the least material difference, or have any partial effect. No other part of the common law of England, it appears to me, can have any reference to this subject, but that part of it which prescribes remedies against the crown. Every State in the Union in every instance where its sovereignty has not been delegated to the United States, I consider to be as compleatly sovereign, as the United States are in respect to the powers surrendered. The United States are sovereign as to all the powers of Government actually surrendered: Each State in the Union is sovereign as to all the powers reserved. It must necessarily be so, because the United States have no claim to any authority but such as the States have surrendered to them: Of course the part not surrendered must remain as it did before. The powers of the general Government, either of a Legislative or Executive nature, or which particularly concerns Treaties with Foreign Powers, do for the most part (if not wholly) affect individuals, and not States: They require no aid from any State authority. This is the great leading distinction between the old articles of confederation, and the present constitution. The Judicial power is of a peculiar kind. It is indeed commensurate with the ordinary Legislative and Executive powers of the general government, and the Power which concerns treaties. But it also goes further. Where certain parties are concerned, although the subject in controversy does not relate to any of the special objects of authority of the general Government, wherein the separate sovereignties of the States are blended in one common mass of supremacy, yet the general Government has a Judicial Authority in regard to such
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