Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/594

 586 proceed farther, than to define the judicial power, and the tribunals, in which it should be vested." The court says, that such a construction would render the clause, dividing the jurisdiction of the court into original and appellate, totally useless; that "affirmative words are often, in their operation, negative of other objects, than those which are affirmed; and, in this case, (in the case of Marbury v. Madison,) a negative or exclusive sense must be given to them, or they have no operation at all." "It cannot be presumed," adds the court, "that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a construction is inadmissible, unless the words require it."

§ 1711. The whole reasoning of the court proceeds upon the idea, that the affirmative words of the clause, giving one sort of jurisdiction, must imply a negative of any other sort of jurisdiction, because otherwise the words would be totally inoperative; and this reasoning is advanced in a case, to which it was strictly applicable. If in that case original jurisdiction could have been exercised, the clause under consideration would have been entirely useless. Having such cases only in its view, the court lays down a principle, which is generally correct, in terms much broader, than the decision, and not only much broader, than the reasoning, with which that decision is supported, but in some instances contradictory to its principle. The reasoning sustains the negative operation of the words in that case, because otherwise the clause would have no meaning whatever, and because such operation, was necessary to give effect to the intention of the article. The effort now made is, to apply the conclusion, to which the court was conducted by that reasoning in the particular case, to one, in which the words have their