the
court, after stating the question it was about to decide in a manner
too plain to be misunderstood, proceeded to decide it, and announced,
as the opinion of the tribunal, that in organizing the judicial
department of the Government in a Territory of the United States,
Congress does not act under, and is not restricted by, the third
article in the Constitution, and is not bound, in a Territory, to
ordain and establish courts in which the judges hold their offices
during good behaviour, but may exercise the discretionary power which
a State exercises in establishing its judicial department, and
regulating the jurisdiction of its courts, and may authorize the
Territorial Government to establish, or may itself establish, courts
in which the judges hold their offices for a term of years only; and
may vest in them judicial power upon subjects confided to the
judiciary of the United States. And in doing this, Congress
undoubtedly exercises the combined power of the General and a State
Government. It exercises the discretionary power of a State Government
in authorizing the establishment of a court in which the judges hold
their appointments for a term of years only, and not during good
behaviour; and it exercises the power of the General Government in
investing that court with admiralty jurisdiction, over which the
General Government had exclusive jurisdiction in the Territory.

No one, we presume, will question the correctness of that opinion; nor
is there anything in conflict with it in the opinion now given. The
point decided in the case cited has no relation to the question now
before the court. That depended on the construction of the third
article of the Constitution, in relation to the judiciary of the
United States, and the power which Congress might exercise in a
Territory in organizing the judicial department of the Government. The
case before us depends upon other and different provisions of the
Constitution, altogether separate and apart from the one above
mentioned. The question as to what courts Congress may ordain or
establish in a Territory to administer laws which the Constitution
authorizes it to pass, and what laws it is or is not authorized by the
Constitution to pass, are widely different--are regulated by different
and separate articles of the Constitution, and stand upon different
principles. And we are satisfied that no one who reads attentively the
page in Peters's Reports to which we have referr