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One early turning point came in 1793, when Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson sent the Supreme Court a letter on behalf of President Washington requesting help in resolving questions of interpretation that had arisen under the 1778 treaty between France and the United States. The letter posed twenty-nine specific questions. Judges of the state courts then commonly offered–as several still do–"advisory opinions" of the sort the president sought. But Chief Justice Jay and the associated justices viewed the request as falling outside the jurisdiction of federal courts. In a letter to the president, the Court responded:"The lines of separation drawn by the Constitution between the three departments of the government–their being in certain respects checks upon each other–and our being judges of a court in the last resort–are considerations which afford strong arguments against the propriety of our extrajudicially deciding the questions alluded to.
早期的第一个转折点发生在1793年， 国务卿托马斯·杰弗逊代表华盛顿总统致函最高法院，希望大法官们帮忙解释1778年的《美法条约》，借此解决条约引发的一系列问题。公函列出了29个具体问题。当时，各州法官经常为总统出具所谓“咨询意见”，某些州至今仍这么做。但是杰伊大法官和其他联席大法官认为，杰弗逊的这一请求超出了联邦法院的职权范围。在给总统的回函中，最高法院答复说：“宪法为政府三大部门设定的分界线——要求它们在某些方面互相制约监督——我们只是终审法院法官——上述界限可以作为有力依据，阻止我们逾越司法权限、做出答疑解惑的不当之举。


This early rejection of an advisory role established a lasting principle: that the federal courts have the constitutional power to decide only those questions that arise in the context of disputes between opposing parties. The principle is easier to state than to apply, and the Court has spent the subsequent two centuries elaborating on it. Even today, the contours of what is often referred to as the"Article III jurisdiction" of the federal courts remain contested. The important points here are simply these: that questions concerning the federal courts' jurisdiction are anchored deeply in the nation's constitutional origin, and that the Supreme Court itself has provided the answers.
上述拒绝充当顾问角色的早期做法，确立起一项恒定法则：根据宪法授权，联邦法院只处理因对立当事人之间的争议引发的问题。不过，这项法则说起来容易，用起来却很麻烦，最高法院在之后的两个世纪，一直在对它进行详细阐释。直到今天，联邦法院的“宪法第三条管辖权”的范围仍然存在很大争议。最重要的争议很简单：联邦法院的管辖权问题本来深植于我国的宪法源头，最高法院却自己给出了答案。


The Supreme Court meet for the first time on February 2,1790, in New York City, the country's first capital. The Court's meeting place was the Merchants Exchange (sometimes referred to as the Royal Exchange) building in lower Manhattan, the first of several locations that served as a home for the Supreme Court until the justices got their own building on Capitol Hill in 1935.

1790年2月，最高法院大法官们在纽约市首度聚齐，当时纽约尚是我国首都。最高法院第一次会议在位于下曼哈顿地区的商业交易所（又称“皇家交易所”）大楼内举行，那里也是最高法院1935年在国会山上拥有属于自己的办公场所之前，使用过的几个办公地点之一。

最高法院大法官首度聚齐进行第一次会议的商业交易所：

易读错单词：

1. Advisory
adj. 咨询的；顾问的；劝告的
n. 报告；公告

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2. Propriety
n. 适当；礼节；得体

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3. Allude
vi. 暗指，转弯抹角地说到；略为提及，顺便提到

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4. Contour
n. 轮廓；等高线；周线；电路；概要
vt. 画轮廓；画等高线
n. (Contour)人名；(法)孔图尔

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5. Contest
vt. 争辩；提出质疑
vi. 竞争；争辩
n. 竞赛；争夺；争论

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