102. The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States is both original and appellate. Its original jurisdiction is defined in the Constitution as “in all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a State is a party.”[255] The Court can have original jurisdiction in no other cases, nor can Congress extend or diminish the Court’s jurisdiction. Thus to the words in the Constitution conferring original jurisdiction on the Court “a negative or exclusive sense must be given, or they have no operation at all.”[256] The original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court was conferred because of the dignity and rank of the Court, and the rank of the parties thus privileged to appear before it at first instance. Ambassadors, public ministers, and consuls represent sovereignties, and a State in the Union is “for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate.”[257] On this delegation of original jurisdiction Chief Justice Marshall remarks: “There is, perhaps, no part of the article under consideration so much required by national policy as this.”[258] The rank of the parties is the reason for giving them the right to begin their case in the Supreme Court. They are not excluded from beginning it in some other court. But Congress, in establishing an inferior court, may deny to it any jurisdiction in cases to which foreign representatives are a party.[259] The right of ambassadors, public ministers, and consuls to begin their suits in the Supreme Court is a privilege accorded them because of their governments, and not because of themselves. As they are accredited to the Government of the United States and not to any State government, it is proper that the United States courts, and of these the Supreme Court, should have original jurisdiction in their cases.[260] In all the other cases mentioned in the Constitution the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction; that is, cases come before the Court on appeal from the decision of some inferior federal court, or from some State court, as provided by law. The entire procedure in an appeal to the Supreme Court is regulated by Congress. If a party, whether private person, private corporation, or public corporation, citizen, or State is within the jurisdiction of the United States, then that person or corporation, if a party to a case or controversy at law, is within the jurisdiction of a federal court. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and this Constitution, the acts of Congress and the treaties made by its authority are the law of federal jurisdiction. Thus it is commonly and truly said, that whensoever the Constitution, or a treaty, or an act of Congress is involved in the controversy, the federal courts (as their several jurisdictions are determined by law) have jurisdiction in the case. The principle is one of sovereignty.