Constitutional Opinion No. 2026-0772
Case Information
- Content Scored
- United States v. Bevans, 16 U.S. 336 (1818)
- Source
- Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Reports Vol. 16 (3 Wheaton)
- Author
- Chief Justice John Marshall (opinion of the Court)
- Publication Date
- 1818-02-01
- Content Type
- Judicial Opinion / Legal-Normative Text
- Opinion Issued
- 2026-07-20
- AFCS Version
- 1.0
Holding
A Marshall opinion that cuts against Marshall's usual grain, and the Standard credits it for exactly that: here the great nationalist confines federal power rather than expanding it, and respects the states' jurisdiction rather than absorbing it. A marine committed murder on the deck of the warship Independence in Boston harbor; Marshall held a federal court could not try him under the Crimes Act of 1790. The bay was within Massachusetts's territorial jurisdiction, not "out of the jurisdiction of any particular state"; and a warship's deck was not a "fort, arsenal, dock-yard, magazine, or... other place... under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States," because those objects "are all, in their nature, fixed and territorial," and "other place" meant another of that fixed, territorial character -- not a ship. The move that gives it weight: "the inquiry respects, not the extent of the power of congress, but the extent to which that power has been exercised." Congress COULD have criminalized it but in 1790 (when the US "did not possess a single ship of war") had not, and a court applies only the law the legislature actually wrote. Clean alignment: judicial restraint and faithful construction, courts keeping to the enacted text (Article XVII, 80); federalism and the limits of Washington in their least common Marshall form -- federal power held to what Congress conferred, the state's territorial jurisdiction respected (Article XII, 78); the rule of law without a failure of order, the crime remaining fully cognizable by Massachusetts so the murderer was remitted to the proper forum, not freed (Article XVIII, 76). No countervailing tension -- federal power confined but not denied, the state honored, the offense still prosecutable. Scored as Legal/Normative text (85/15). Tier 1 nets to 78; the result is 80 -- America First, at the threshold: a clean lesson in the limits of federal power from the man most associated with its expansion. Principle scored, not result.
It is the judgment of this Court that Opinion No. 2026-0772 is hereby entered into the record, in accordance with the America First Constitutional Standard. The score stands. The reasoning is published. The record is public.