Nathan Clifford

“ State police in its widest sense comprehends the whole system of internal regulation by which the State seeks not only to preserve the public order and to prevent offences against her authority, but also to establish for the intercourse of one citizen with another those rules of justice, morality, and good conduct which are calculated to prevent a conflict of interests and to insure to every one the uninterrupted enjoyment of his own, as far as is reasonably consistent with a like enjoyment of equal rights by others. ”

“ Acts of Congress cannot properly supersede the police powers of the State, nor can the police powers of the State override the national authority, as the power of the State in that regard extends only to a just regulation of rights with a view to the due protection and enjoyment of all ”

“ Where the matter in dispute is sufficient in value, the common-law writ of error to the Circuit Court will lie in every case, if the judgment is final in the court to which the writ of error is addressed; but the writ of error to the State court will not lie at all, unless the construction of some clause of the Constitution, or some act of Congress, or treaty, is drawn in question, and the decision was adverse to the party setting up such right or title. ”

“ Persons accused of capital or otherwise infamous crimes must be indicted by a grand jury, and when the offence is committed in a State, they must be tried in the State where it was committed; but attention is not called to any article or section of the Constitution that forbids that a Federal officer shall be tried in a State court for murder committed in the open State, against the peace and dignity of the State, and contrary to the form of the State statute defining the offence. ”

“ Under existing laws the circuit courts have no jurisdiction whatever to re-examine the judgments of the State courts in any case, civil or criminal, the power to exercise such a revision even in civil cases involving Federal questions, being vested exclusively in the Supreme Court. Neither the Supreme Court nor the circuit courts can re-examine the conviction, sentence, or judgment of the District Court in a criminal case in any form, either by writ of error or appeal. ”

“ Early legislation of Congress gave the circuit courts original cognizance concurrent with the several States of all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity, where the matter in dispute exceeds, exclusive of costs, the sum or value of $500, and the United States are plaintiffs or petitioners, or an alien is a party, or the suit is between a citizen of a State where the suit is brought and a citizen of another State. ”

“ Offices may be created by a law of Congress, and officers to execute the duties of the same may be appointed in the manner specified in the Constitution; and it is not doubted that Congress may pass laws for their protection, and for that purpose may define the offence of killing such an officer when in the discharge of his duties. ”

“ Public police is in effect defined by the great commentator of the common law as the due regulation of domestic order, whereby the citizens of a State are bound to conform to the rules of propriety and good conduct, and to be moral, industrious, and inoffensive in their respective stations. ”

“ Murder is defined by the law of the State as follows: If any person of sound memory and discretion unlawfully kill any reasonable creature, in being and under the peace of the State, with malice aforethought, either express or implied, such person shall be guilty of murder. ”

“ Powers expressly enumerated are granted to Congress, and such as shall be necessary and proper for carrying the enumerated powers into execution, or, in other words, the powers of Congress are made up of concessions from the people of the several States, with such implied powers as are necessary and proper to carry the express concessions into effect, subject to the limitation that whatever is not expressly granted or necessarily or properly implied to carry the granted powers into effect is reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. ”

“ When perpetrated by means of poison, lying in wait, or by any other kind of wilful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing, or in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetrate certain other enumerated crimes, it is murder in the first degree; and the petition of the prisoner, in this case, shows that the charge against him is murder in the first degree, as defined by the State statute. ”

“ Exceptional cases undoubtedly arise where it may properly be said that the citizen owes allegiance to two sovereigns, and may be liable to punishment for an infraction of the laws of either, where the same act is a transgression and defined offence under the laws of both. ”

“ Nothing is contained in the section which has any tendency to support the opposite construction, except the words 'suit or prosecution;' and it should not be overlooked that it employs no words exclusively applicable to an indictment, and contains many expressions utterly repugnant to the theory that the proceedings to effect the removal of process were intended to extend to a criminal and indictable offence. ”

“ Further remarks in exposition of the enactment seem to be unnecessary, as it is clear that it is in all essential respects the same as its predecessors, some of which were passed and went into operation even before the actual close of the second war of Independence. ”