Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/405

385 THE STATUS OF OUR NEW TERRITORIES. 385 8th section of Art. i. It would be very surprising, therefore, if they should disclose any intention to extend their operation be- yond the limits of the States; and in fact they do not disclose any such intention. If any doubt exists as to the extent of territory over which any of them are operative, it is only as to the ist Amendment,^ and it arises, not from any doubt as to the intention of its authors, but from the same cause as in subsection 8 of Section 9 of Art. i. As to the remaining first ten Amendments, the utmost that can be said against the view now urged is that the language in which they are couched is so broad and general as to make them susceptible of an indefinite extension in respect to ter- ritory; but that is far from being sufficient to overcome the pre- sumption which exists in favor of their being limited to the States. Moreover, it is as true of the first ten Amendments as it is of the 9th Section of Art. i, that the intention of their authors was the same as to all of them, so far as regards the extent of territory over which they were to be operative ; and yet it is certain that some of them are limited in their operation to the States. Thus, the 6th Amendment provides that all criminal trials shall be by a jury of the "State and district" in which the crime shall have been committed;^ and by "district" is here meant either an entire State or a subdivision of a State. So the 7th Amendment perpetuates the right to trial by jury in common-law actions, and declares that no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law. It is assumed, therefore, that the common law of England will be the law of the land in every place where this amendment will be operative. More- over, the operation of the amendment is expressly limited to courts of the United States, i. e., courts exercising some portion of the judicial power conferred upon the United States by Art. 3 of the Constitution; and it is only within the States, as has been seen,' that such power can be exercised, or such courts can exist. Lastly, the loth Amendment provides that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution {i. e., in its first three articles), nor prohibited by it to the States {i. e., in Section 10 ' "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit- ing the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
 * U. S. V. Dawson, 15 How. 467. ' See supra, page 378.