ing for the Court, undertook to answer Roane. Roane's major
premise he met with flat denial: "It is a mistake," he asserts, "that
the Constitution was not designed to operate upon States in their
corporate capacities. It is crowded with provisions which restrain or
annul the sovereignty of the States in some of the highest branches of
their prerogatives." The greater part of the opinion, however,
consisted of a minute examination of the language of Article III of
the Constitution. In brief, he pointed out that while Congress
"may... establish" inferior courts and, therefore, may not, it was made
imperative that the judicial power of the United States "shall extend
to all cases arising... under" the Constitution and acts of Congress.
If, therefore, Congress should exercise its option and not establish
inferior courts, in what manner, he asked, could the purpose of the
Constitution be realized except by providing appeals from the state
courts to the United States Supreme Court? But more than that, the
practical consequences of the position taken by the Virginia Court of
Appeals effectually refuted it. That there should be as many versions
of the Constitution, laws, and treaties as there are States in the Union
was certainly never intended by the framers, nor yet that plaintiffs
alone should say when resort should be had to the national tribunals,
which were designed for the benefit of all.

* 1 Wheaton, 304. Marshall had an indirect interest in the case.
See supra, Chapter II.

If Story's argument is defective at any point, it is in its failure to
lay down a clear definition of "cases arising under this Constitution,"
and this defect in constitutional interpretation is supplied five years
later in Marshall's opinion in Cohens vs. Virginia. * The facts of this
famous case were as follows: Congress had established a lottery for the
District of Columbia, for which the Cohens had sold tickets in Virginia.
They had thus run foul of a state law prohibiting such transactions and
had been convicted of the offense in the Court of Quarterly Sessions of
Norfolk County and fined one hundred dollars. From this judgment they
were now appealing under Section XXV.

* 6 Wheaton, 264.

Counsel for the State of Virginia again advanced the principles which
had been developed by Roane in Hunter vs. Martin but urged in addition
that this particular appeal rendered Virginia a defendant contrary to
Article XI of the Amendments. Mar