Nathan Clifford

“ But the twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act went on to declare that in such cases no other error should be assigned or regarded as a ground of reversal than such as immediately respected the question referred to as the ground of jurisdiction. It having been early decided that Congress had power to regulate the exercise of the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, the court has always considered itself bound by this restriction, and as authorized to reverse judgments of State courts only for errors in deciding the Federal questions involved therein. ”

“ Proving that the government did not appropriate the land for a navy yard is a very different thing from setting up a claim to the land under an act of Congress.
I think, therefore, that in this case there was no title or right claimed by the appellants under any statute of, or authority exercised under, the United States; and consequently that there was no decision against any such title; and, therefore, that this court has no jurisdiction. ”

“ It seems to me, therefore, that their claim is based entirely on the deed of 1844; and that the subsequent action of the government, so far as it has any effect in the case, is merely matter of evidence on the question of fact of abandonment; and that the failure of the government, from the beginning, to take any steps for establishing a navy yard on the land would have been no more a mere fact in pais to be proved in order to support the claim of the complainants, than were all the acts of the government which did, in fact, take place. ”