NOTE—Hamilton in _The Federalist_ makes the classic and earliest examination of the executive power,—Nos. lxvii.-lxxvi. Marshall’s conception of the federal executive accords with Hamilton’s. This conception is further developed in the decisions of the Supreme Court, in Marshall’s time, concerning executive functions, and by Mr. Justice Story in his _Commentaries on the Constitution_. In _Political Science and Constitutional Law_ (2 vols. 1891), John W. Burgess makes a critical and comparative study of executive power. J. H. Finley and J. F. Sanderson in their _The American Executive and Executive Methods_ (1908), present the operation of executive power, State and federal, at the present time. CHAPTER VIII THE LAW OF JUDICIAL POWER 96. The people of the United States, like other sovereignties, possess not only legislative and executive functions, but also judicial. The possession of these three powers by sovereignty is essential to its existence and a condition of any conception of it. The judicial power of the United States is vested in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as Congress from time to time may ordain and establish. This is a delegation of judicial power.[243] The inferior courts are established by Congress but the power of these courts is delegated to them by the people of the United States through the Constitution. Thus it may be said that these inferior courts exist by act of Congress but their authority is delegated to them by the same sovereignty that empowers Congress to create them. The power of the Supreme Court is defined in the word _supreme_, and that of the inferior courts in the word _inferior_. Congress can neither increase nor decrease this power; the sovereign alone, the people of the United States can modify the grant. This it has done by the Eleventh Amendment, ratified in 1798: The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign State.[244] This Amendment was added in compliance with the idea,—at the time dominant in America,—that a State, a member of the Union, is a sovereign, and being sovereign, cannot be made defendant (that is, cannot be sued) at the suit of a citizen or subject of another State, or of a foreign country. The idea was,—and is,—that an American Commonwealth may be petitioned, like any other sovereign, but can be sued only in its own courts and with its own consent.[245] In conformity to this idea the Constitution was so amended as to deny to the courts of the United States any jurisdiction whatever in any case in which an American Commonwealth is made a defendant.