In Martin vs. Hunter's Lessee, ¹ which was decided in February, 1816, Story, speaking for the Court, undertook to answer Roane. Roane's major premise he met with flat denial: "It is a mistake," he asserts, "that the Constitution was not designed to operate upon States in their corporate capacities. It is crowded with provisions which restrain or annul the sovereignty of the States in some of the highest branches of their prerogatives." The greater part of the opinion, however, consisted of a minute examination of the language of Article III of the Constitution. In brief, he pointed out that while Congress "may ... establish" inferior courts and, therefore, may not, it was made imperative that the judicial power of the United States "shall extend to all cases arising ... under" the Constitution and acts of Congress. If, therefore, Congress should exercise its option and not establish inferior courts, in what manner, he asked, could the purpose of the Constitution be realized except by providing appeals from the state courts to the United States Supreme Court? But more than that, the practical consequences of the position taken by the Virginia Court of Appeals effectually refuted it. That there should be as many versions of the Constitution, laws, and treaties as there are States in the Union was certainly never intended by the framers, nor yet that plaintiffs alone should say when resort should be had to the national tribunals, which were designed for the benefit of all. ¹ 1 Wheaton, 304. Marshall had an indirect interest in the case. See supra, pp. 44-45. If Story's argument is defective at any point, it is in its failure to lay down a clear definition of "cases arising under this Constitution," and this defect in constitutional interpretation is supplied five years later in Marshall's opinion in Cohens vs. Virginia. ¹ The facts of this famous case were as follows: Congress had established a lottery for the District of Columbia, for which the Cohens had sold tickets in Virginia. They had thus run foul of a state law prohibiting such transactions and had been convicted of the offense in the Court of Quarterly Sessions of Norfolk County and fined one hundred dollars. From this judgment they were now appealing under Section XXV. ¹ 6 Wheaton, 264.