een the States, are proper objects of federal
superintendence and control.

It may be esteemed the basis of the Union, that "the citizens of each
State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens
of the several States." And if it be a just principle that every
government ought to possess the means of executing its own provisions
by its own authority, it will follow, that in order to the inviolable
maintenance of that equality of privileges and immunities to which the
citizens of the Union will be entitled, the national judiciary ought to
preside in all cases in which one State or its citizens are opposed
to another State or its citizens. To secure the full effect of so
fundamental a provision against all evasion and subterfuge, it is
necessary that its construction should be committed to that tribunal
which, having no local attachments, will be likely to be impartial
between the different States and their citizens, and which, owing its
official existence to the Union, will never be likely to feel any bias
inauspicious to the principles on which it is founded.

The fifth point will demand little animadversion. The most bigoted
idolizers of State authority have not thus far shown a disposition to
deny the national judiciary the cognizances of maritime causes. These
so generally depend on the laws of nations, and so commonly affect the
rights of foreigners, that they fall within the considerations which are
relative to the public peace. The most important part of them are, by
the present Confederation, submitted to federal jurisdiction.

The reasonableness of the agency of the national courts in cases in
which the State tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial, speaks for
itself. No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own cause, or in
any cause in respect to which he has the least interest or bias. This
principle has no inconsiderable weight in designating the federal courts
as the proper tribunals for the determination of controversies between
different States and their citizens. And it ought to have the same
operation in regard to some cases between citizens of the same State.
Claims to land under grants of different States, founded upon adverse
pretensions of boundary, are of this description. The courts of neither
of the granting States could be expected to be unbiased. The laws may
have even prejudged the question, and tied the courts down to decisions
in favor of the grants of the St