either event, when does a case arise under the Constitution or the
laws of the United States? Here, too, are questions which are left for
Congress in the first instance and for the Supreme Court in the last.
Further, the Supreme Court is given "original jurisdiction" in certain
specified cases and "appellate jurisdiction" in all others--subject,
however, to "such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress
shall make." Finally, the whole question of the relation of the national
courts to the state judiciaries, though it is elaborately discussed
by Alexander Hamilton in the "Federalist," is left by the Constitution
itself to the practically undirected wisdom of Congress, in the exercise
of its power to pass "all laws which shall be necessary and proper
for carrying into execution" * its own powers and those of the other
departments of the Government.

* Article I, section VIII, 18.

Almost the first official act of the Senate of the United States,
after it had perfected its own organization, was the appointment of a
committee "to bring in a bill for organizing the judiciary of the
United States." This committee consisted of eight members, five of
whom, including Oliver Ellsworth, its chairman, had been members of
the Federal Convention. To Ellsworth is to be credited largely the
authorship of the great Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789, the
essential features of which still remain after 130 years in full force
and effect.

This famous measure created a chief justiceship and five associate
justiceships for the Supreme Court; fifteen District Courts, one for
each State of the Union and for each of the two Territories, Kentucky
and Ohio; and, to stand between these, three Circuit Courts consisting
of two Supreme Court justices and the local district judge. The "cases"
and "controversies" comprehended by the Act fall into three groups:
first, those brought to enforce the national laws and treaties, original
jurisdiction of which was assigned to the District Courts; secondly,
controversies between citizens of different States *; lastly, cases
brought originally under a state law and in a State Court but
finally coming to involve some claim of right based on the National
Constitution, laws, or treaties. For these the twenty-fifth section of
the Act provided that, where the decision of the highest State Court
competent under the state law to pass upon the case was adverse to the
claim thus set up, an appe