Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/520

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512
CONSTITUTION OF THE U. STATES.
[BOOK III.
States, and sustained by the opposite construction, provided the facts necessary to support the action be made out, then all the other questions must be decided, as incidental to this, which gives that jurisdiction. Those other questions cannot arrest the proceedings. Under this construction, the judicial power of the Union extends effectively and beneficially to that most important class of cases, which depend on the character of the cause. On the opposite construction, the judicial power never can be extended to a whole case, as expressed by the constitution; but to those parts of cases only, which present the particular question involving the construction of the constitution or the law. We say it never can be extended to the whole case; because, if the circumstance, that other points are involved in it, shall disable congress from authorizing the courts of the Union to take jurisdiction of the original cause, it equally disables congress from authorizing those courts to take jurisdiction of the whole cause, on an appeal; and thus it will be restricted to a single question in that cause. And words obviously intended to secure to those, who claim rights under the constitution, laws, or treaties, of the United States, a trial in the federal courts, will be restricted to the insecure remedy of an appeal upon an insulated point, after it has received that shape, which may be given to it by another tribunal, into which he is forced against his will. We think, then, that when a question, to which the judicial power of the Union is extended by the constitution, forms an ingredient of the original cause, it is in the power of congress to give the circuit courts jurisdiction of that cause, although other questions of fact or of law may be involved in it.