ess
might from time to time establish, was vested "the judicial power of the
United States." This power was declared to extend to all cases, in law
and equity, arising under the Constitution itself, the laws of the
United States, and treaties made under their authority; to all cases
affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; to all cases
of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the
United States should be a party; to controversies between two or more
States, between a State and citizens of another State, and between
citizens of different States, as well as between citizens of the same
State claiming lands under grants of different States, and between a
State, or the citizens thereof, and foreign States, citizens, or
subjects. In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and
consuls, and those in which a State should be a party, the Supreme Court
was vested with original jurisdiction, while in all the other
enumerated cases its jurisdiction was to be appellate. With the
exceptions of suits against a State by individuals, which were excluded
by the Eleventh Amendment, the judicial power of the United States
remains to-day as it was originally created.

But at the time when the Constitution was made, the importance to which
the judicial power would attain in the political system of the United
States could not be foreseen. The form was devised, but, like the nation
itself, its full proportions remained to be developed. In that
development, so far as it has been made by the judiciary, one man was
destined to play a pre-eminent part. This man was John Marshall, under
whose hand, as James Bryce has happily said, the Constitution "seemed
not so much to rise ... to its full stature, as to be gradually unveiled
by him, till it stood revealed in the harmonious perfection of the form
which its framers had designed." For this unrivalled achievement there
has been conceded to Marshall by universal consent the title of
Expounder of the Constitution of the United States; and the general
approval with which his work is now surveyed is attested by the tribute
lately paid to his memory. The observance on the 4th of February, 1901,
by a celebration spontaneously national, of the one hundredth
anniversary of his assumption of the office of Chief Justice of the
United States, is without example in judicial annals. It is therefore a
matter of interest not only to every student of American