within the limits of a State dominion, or, being within one, are excepted from its jurisdiction, and over all persons and things therein exclusively. Congress has certain powers of legislation, some granted for certain purposes in absolute terms, as specific grants of power, and without mention of limits, which legislation has a national extent or jurisdiction without distinction of persons or places; and some granted for certain districts only, having only a local jurisdiction. The judgment of the national judiciary is entitled to recognition and is to be enforced wherever the laws which it asserts have territorial or personal jurisdiction. The executive power has equal recognition, because its action accompanies the jurisdiction of the laws, the execution of which is intrusted to it.

§ 376. The limits of the several States within which, under the Constitution, they or the people of each are to possess their separate share of sovereign powers, have been determined as to some by the recognition of their ancient colonial boundaries, and by agreements with the other States, or with the United States or the national Government; and as to others by the legislation of Congress in their creation under the Constitution. The territory not known under the geographical division of the several States (not being occupied by a people known separately in the public law of the country as possessing that separate share of sovereign powers which, by that law, is cognizable only in the people of a State of the United States as a definite political person) must necessarily be under the exclusive sovereignty of the United States, or the united people of all the States, in their integral and national possession of sovereign power. For the several States, which before possessed lands lying beyond their present State limits, have conveyed those lands with their right of dominion or jurisdiction to the United States, and under the Constitution of the United States a single State cannot perform those acts of national sovereignty by which territory may be acquired under international law. The nature of that

Art. IV. sect. 3. "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress."

power which may be exercised over this territory by the United States, through their constituted instruments, must be determined by the natural or necessary law of nations,' as applied in public law to the action or mode of existence of sovereign states; or, by the reception, interpretation, or application of that law by the United States or by the national Government as their instrument; the latter being controlled in that respect by the Constitution, as the only legislative exposition of the mode in which any of the sovereign powers of the United States (i. e., of the people of the United States) are to be exercised.*

§ 377. From the existence of this division of sovereign national powers to create law between the Government of the United States and the several States, which has been set forth in the last preceding chapter, and from the difference in the territorial jurisdiction of the laws thus originating, which has been above considered, a distinction may be made in the municipal laws of the United States, as being either national or local.

The national municipal law of the United States thus distinguished is that which originates in the national sovereignty of the United States, (people of the United States,) and which has national extent and jurisdiction over all persons and things within the domain of the United States, whether States, or territory not organized under a State sovereignty.

1 Ante, § 49.

The doctrine of the Supr. Court, in Dred Scott's case, 19 How. pp. 447, 449, 451, Opinion of Court, and cap. 3, is that whether the power of Congress, or of the national Government, over the Territories is derived from the "territory-or-other-property" clause, (Art. IV, sec. 3,) or is a necessary result of the existence of that Government and of its relation to the States and the people of the U. S.-Congress or that Government is not sovereign in a Territory as the people of a State are sovereign within the limits of that State, but that it is, like a State Government, restricted by the law from which it derives its existence, and that there are clauses in the Const. of the U. S., which, in and for territory, have an effect similar to that of a Bill of Rights in a State Constitution.

Mr. Benton, in his Examination of this case, holds that the Constitution of the U. S. does not have any such effect as private law in the Territories; that no rights of private persons can be exercised under it without an act of Congress." See his introductory note. The general doctrine of the Court may be admitted, and then the question is, whether the right of a master in respect to a slave (domiciled, before, in a slave-holding State) is a right protected by the Constitution, thus operating as a Bill of Rights and as private law. This is a distinct question, and on this Mr. Benton's Examination has but little bearing. His whole argument being that Congress has absolute unrestricted power in the Territories.

The local municipal laws of the United States are those which originate in the separate sovereign power held by the people of each State, or in the powers of Congress, for local purposes, within certain limited territory; either of which last has only local or limited extent and jurisdiction within the limits either of such States or of such territory.

§ 378. Although this distinction in the municipal law is founded upon an anterior possession of sovereign powers proved or evidenced by the Constitution,' yet, since the Constitution is also itself a legislative act, and has universal prevalence and recognition in the States and in the territory belonging to the United States, as the supreme rule of positive law in public and private relations, so far as it can be applied to those relations, it must form a part of one of these divisions of municipal law; that is, the national municipal law.

§ 379. Since the legislative or juridical exercise of sovereign power can have no independent force or authority beyond the territorial limits of the state or political body holding that power, the local laws of the several States cannot have any independent extension or authority in the territory of another State of the Union, or in any local jurisdiction of the Government of the United States, nor can the local laws of districts, under the several jurisdiction of the Government of the United States, have any such independent extension and authority in the territory of any State of the Union, or of any other several jurisdiction under that Government.

§ 380. Though all positive law must be considered as operative within certain geographical limits, because always deriving its authority and coercive power from some organized political personality confined to certain limits by the natural or necessary law of nations, yet persons are always the objects of that law, and the relations of persons to each other and to things are its effects. Laws may not only be distinguished from other laws as operating within various jurisdictions, but also as having different persons for their object, and may be distinguished ac

1 Ante, § 331.

2

Ante, § 63.

'Ante, § 21.

cording to the differences which they create between the persons upon whom they operate, as well as by their territorial jurisdictions; that is, they may be considered in respect to their personal jurisdiction or as personal laws.' This distinction may also be made in the municipal law of the United States.

The laws created by the exercise of any sovereign national powers, held by any state or political body to have effect within certain territorial limits, may, or rather must, operate differently upon different persons within that territorial jurisdiction. The laws, proceeding from these sovereign powers, themselves determine, to a certain degree, their own different effect upon different persons. But there are certain general principles connected with the nature of sovereign power, or the conditions under which it is held by states and nations, which, in every jurisdiction, indicate a difference in the application of local laws to persons within that jurisdiction."

§ 381. It was shown in the first chapter, that from the existence of separate possessors of sovereign legislative power, as public bodies or polities, having different territorial jurisdiction, and from the necessary conditions of human society and intercourse, they may, as separate polities, sustain relations towards each other in the exercise of that power. And from this necessity, incident to their existence, and from the fact that there may be some relations of persons to other persons, and some rights of action arising out of them, which cannot, under all circumstances, be maintained, as legal rights, by the distinct authority of any single possessor of that sovereign power, those maxims, or rules of action originate, which are called "international law." 3

It is a circumstance incident to the nature of sovereign national power, and its distribution between various possessors, having, according to the mode of their existence, jurisdiction within certain territorial limits, that persons within that jurisdiction, or within those limits, may be distinguished as either native or alien subjects. The recognition of persons as aliens is

the recognition, by the sovereign source of municipal law in that jurisdiction, of an international relation. The law which affects the condition of the alien is the international law and the municipal (national) law taken together; because the recognition of a person as alien, and the discrimination of that municipal (national) law which shall be allowed to determine his relations and rights, (either that of his domicil or that of the jurisdiction in which he is an alien,) is itself international law; or, what is to say the same thing in different words, that discrimination is judicially made, in the jurisdictions whose tribunals have personal control over the alien, according to principles which, from their application, are called a law between nations, or international law; though they rest, for their legal authority and coercive force within any jurisdiction, on the sovereign power which is therein the source of municipal (internal) law.'

It

§ 382. This international relation between the possessors of sovereign national power and this recognition of persons in an international relation, may exist in reference to any one or more of the modes in which that power can be exercised. may, therefore, exist between political bodies which, according to the conditions of their existence, can exercise sovereign national power in some of its forms only. Or, which is to state the same idea in different words, the sum of sovereign national power held by any one nation may be considered as consisting of various powers, all, or some only, of which may be exercised by any specified political bodies or persons; and this international relation may exist between any such political bodies and any other such, in reference to the exercise of the powers so held by them; provided the powers, so held, are held and exercised, as sovereign, or independently of all exterior authority.

§ 383. It being a basal principle of the public municipal law of the United States, which is proved by the written Constitution, as the evidence of a pre-existing fact, that the sum of sovereign national power is divided between the national Government and the several States, and that the powers held by the

Ante, §§ 53, 54.