f forward in a new
attack.

The connecting link between the Supreme Court and the state courts has
already been pointed out to be Section XXV of the Act of 1789 organizing
the Federal Judiciary. * This section provides, in effect, that when
a suit is brought in a state court under a state law, and the party
against whom it is brought claims some right under a national law or
treaty or under the Constitution itself, the highest state court into
which the case can come must either sustain such a claim or consent to
have its decision reviewed, and possibly reversed, by the Supreme
Court. The defenders of State Rights at first applauded this arrangement
because it left to the local courts the privilege of sharing a
jurisdiction which could have been claimed exclusively by the Federal
Courts. But when State Rights began to grow into State Sovereignty, a
different attitude developed, and in 1814 the Virginia Court of Appeals,
in the case of Hunter vs. Martin, pronounced Section XXV void, though,
in order not to encourage the disloyal tendencies then rampant in New
England, the decision was not published until after the Treaty of Ghent,
in February, 1815.

* See Chapter I.

* * 4 Munford (Va.), 1. See also William E. Dodd's article on
"Chief Justice Marshall and Virginia in American Historical Review,"
vol. XII, p. 776.

The head and front of the Virginia court at this time was Spencer Roane,
described as "the most powerful politician in the State," an ardent
Jeffersonian, and an enemy of Marshall on his own account, for had
Ellsworth not resigned so inopportunely, late in 1800, and had Jefferson
had the appointment of his successor, Roane would have been the man. His
opinion in Hunter vs. Martin disclosed personal animus in every line
and was written with a vehemence which was more likely to discomfit
a grammarian than its designed victims; but it was withal a highly
ingenious plea. At one point Roane enjoyed an advantage which would not
be his today when so much more gets into print, for the testimony of
Madison's Journal, which was not published till 1840, is flatly against
him on the main issue. In 1814, however, the most nearly contemporaneous
evidence as to the intention of the framers of the Constitution was
that of the "Federalist," which Roane stigmatizes as "a mere newspaper
publication written in the heat and fury of the battle," largely by "a
supposed favorer of a consolidated government." This descrip