Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/592

 584 brought under their consideration. It must, therefore, be discarded. Every part of the article must be taken into view, and that construction adopted, which will consist with its words, and promote its general intention. The court may imply a negative from affirmative words, where the implication promotes, not where it defeats, the intention.

§ 1709. If we apply this principle, the correctness of which we believe will not be controverted, to the distributive clause under consideration, the result, we think, would be this; the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in cases, where a state is a party, refers to those cases, in which, according to the grant of power made in the preceding clause, jurisdiction might be exercised in consequence of the character of the party, and an original suit might be instituted in any of the federal courts; not to those cases, in which an original suit might not be instituted in a federal court. Of the last description is every case between a state and its citizens, and, perhaps, every case, in which a state is enforcing its penal laws. In such cases, therefore, the Supreme Court cannot take original jurisdiction. In every other case, that is, in every case, to which the judicial power extends, and in which original jurisdiction is not expressly given, that judicial power shall be exercised in the appellate, and only in the appellate form. The original jurisdiction of this court cannot be enlarged, but its appellate jurisdiction maybe exercised in every case, cognizable under the third article of the constitution in the federal courts, in which original jurisdiction cannot be exercised; and the extent of this judicial power is to be measured, not by giving the affirmative words of the distributive clause a negative operation in every possible case, but by giving their