The minority of the committee will now proceed to advance, in a more distinct form, a few of the reasons why, in their opinion, the 25th section of this act ought not to be repealed.
And, in the first place, it ought to be the chief object of all Governments to protect individual rights. In almost every case involving a question before a State court under this section of the judiciary act, the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States are interposed for the protection of individuals. Does a citizen invoke the protection of an act of Congress upon a trial before a State court which decides that act to be unconstitutional and void, and renders judgment against him? This section secures his right of appeal from such a decision to the Supreme Court of the United States.
When a citizen, in a suit before a State court, contends that a State law, by which he is assailed, is a violation of the Constitution of the United States and therefore void (if his plea should be overruled), he may bring this question before the Supreme Court of the United States.
In like manner, when an individual claims any right before a State court under the Constitution or laws of the United States, and the decision is against his claim, he may appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.
If this section were repealed, all these important individual rights would be forfeited.
The history of our country abundantly proves that individual States are liable to high excitements and strong prejudices. The judges of these States would be more or less than men if they did not participate in the feelings of the community by which they are surrounded. Under the influence of these excitements, individuals, whose rights happen to clash with the prevailing feeling of the State, would have but a slender hope of obtaining justice before a State tribunal. There would be the power and the influence of the State sovereignty on the one side, and an individual who had made himself obnoxious to popular odium on the other. In such cases, ought the liberty or the property of a citizen, so far as he claims the same under the Constitution or laws of the United States, to be decided before a State court, without an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, on whom the construction of this very Constitution and these laws has been conferred, in all cases, by the Constitution?