Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/33

Rh The supremacy of the Nation in its constitutional field of operation being thus established, the next step requi- site to the fulfillment of the purposes of the f ramers of the Constitution was the establishment of a tribunal which should have the power of enforcing throughout the Na- tion and in the States the supremacy of the Constitution and of the laws so asserted — an organ of Government, which should be, as Bryce has termed it, " the living voice of the Constitution/' By the adoption of Sec- tions 1 and 2 of Article III, the framers completed their work in providing that: "The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Coiurt, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish" ; and by enumerating the cases to which the judicial power should extend, and the scope of the original and of the appellate juris- diction of the Supreme Court. ^ The structure of the National Judiciary being thus outlined, the Convention left to the First Congress the important tasks of settling the composition of the Supreme Court, of erecting inferior Courts, of framing modes of procedure, and — most important of all — of establishing the extent of the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction, both with refer- ence to State and inferior Federal Courts. The task thus imposed upon the Congress was of a most delicate nature ; for during the long contest over the adoption of the Constitution, after it left the hands of its framers, the Article relating to the Judicial branch of the new Government had been the subject of more severe criticism and of greater apprehensions than any other portion of the instrument.* Elbridge Gerry had complained that "there are no well-defined limits of the

iSec Muskrai v. Untied 8taie$ (1911), 219 U. S. 846.

> History cf the Sujrreme Court of the United Staiee (1891), by Hampton L. Car- aon. 107-119.