[427] 1 Wheaton, 362.
[428] Marshall to his brother, July 9, 1822, MS.
Parts of this long letter are of interest: "Although Judge White [of the Winchester court] will, of course, conform to the decision of the court of appeals against the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme court, & therefore deny that the opinion in the case of Fairfax & Hunter is binding, yet he must admit that the supreme court is the proper tribunal for expounding the treaties of the United States, & that its decisions on a treaty are binding on the state courts, whether they possess the appellate jurisdiction or not.... The exposition of any state law by the courts of that state, are considered in the courts of all the other states, and in those of the United States, as a correct exposition, not to be reexamined.
"The only exception to this rule is when the statute of a state is supposed to violate the constitution of the United States, in which case the courts of the Union claim a controuling & supervising power. Thus any construction made by the courts of Virginia on the statute of descents or of distribution, or on any other subject, is admitted as conclusive in the federal courts, although those courts might have decided differently on the statute itself. The principle is that the courts of every government are the proper tribunals for construing the legislative acts of that government.
"Upon this principle the Supreme court of the United States, independent of its appellate jurisdiction, is the proper tribunal for construing the laws & treaties of the United States; and the construction of that court ought to be received every where as the right construction. The Supreme court of the United States has settled the construction of the treaty of peace to be that lands at that time held by British subjects were not escheatable or grantable by a state.... I refer particularly to Smith v The State of Maryland 6th Cranch Jackson v Clarke 3 Wheaton & Orr v Hodgson 4 Wheaton. The last case is explicit & was decided unanimously, Judge Johnson assenting.
"This being the construction of the highest court of the government which is a party to the treaty is to be considered by all the world as its true construction unless Great Britain, the other party, should controvert it. The court of appeals has not denied this principle. The dicta of Judge Roane respecting the treaty were anterior to this constitutional construction of it."
[429] See vol. iii, chap. x, of this work.
[430] 1 Wheaton, 362-63.
[431] Johnson's opinion was published in the National Intelligencer, April 16, 1816, as an answer to Roane's argument. (Smith in Branch Hist. Papers, June, 1905, 23.)
[432] Story, i, 277.