eme Court of the United States. The Constitution in direct terms
gives an appellate jurisdiction to the Supreme Court in all the
enumerated cases of federal cognizance in which it is not to have an
original one, without a single expression to confine its operation to
the inferior federal courts. The objects of appeal, not the tribunals
from which it is to be made, are alone contemplated. From this
circumstance, and from the reason of the thing, it ought to be construed
to extend to the State tribunals. Either this must be the case, or the
local courts must be excluded from a concurrent jurisdiction in matters
of national concern, else the judiciary authority of the Union may be
eluded at the pleasure of every plaintiff or prosecutor. Neither of
these consequences ought, without evident necessity, to be involved; the
latter would be entirely inadmissible, as it would defeat some of the
most important and avowed purposes of the proposed government, and would
essentially embarrass its measures. Nor do I perceive any foundation for
such a supposition. Agreeably to the remark already made, the national
and State systems are to be regarded as ONE WHOLE. The courts of the
latter will of course be natural auxiliaries to the execution of the
laws of the Union, and an appeal from them will as naturally lie to that
tribunal which is destined to unite and assimilate the principles of
national justice and the rules of national decisions. The evident aim
of the plan of the convention is, that all the causes of the specified
classes shall, for weighty public reasons, receive their original or
final determination in the courts of the Union. To confine, therefore,
the general expressions giving appellate jurisdiction to the Supreme
Court, to appeals from the subordinate federal courts, instead of
allowing their extension to the State courts, would be to abridge the
latitude of the terms, in subversion of the intent, contrary to every
sound rule of interpretation.

But could an appeal be made to lie from the State courts to the
subordinate federal judicatories? This is another of the questions
which have been raised, and of greater difficulty than the former. The
following considerations countenance the affirmative. The plan of the
convention, in the first place, authorizes the national legislature "to
constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court."(2) It declares, in
the next place, that "the JUDICIAL POWER of the United States shal