y presented to and decided by a State
court has been held to be in itself a federal question, to be decided by
the Supreme Court on appeal.[313] Likewise a contention that a decision
of a State court disregarded decrees of a United States Court has been
held to bring a case within the Court's jurisdiction;[314] also a
decision by a State court which was adverse to an asserted federal right
although, as the record of the case showed, it might have been based
upon an independent and adequate nonfederal ground.[315] This latter
ruling, however, was qualified during the same term of Court in a case
which held that it is essential to the jurisdiction of the Supreme
Court, in reviewing a decision of a State court that it must appear
affirmatively from the record, not only that a federal question was
presented for determination, but that its decision was necessary to the
determination of the cause; that the federal question was actually
decided, or that the judgment could not have been given without deciding
it.[316]

These rules all flow from the broader principle that if the laws and
Constitution of the United States are to be observed, the Supreme Court
cannot accept as final the decision of a State court on matters alleged
to give rise to an asserted federal right.[317] Consequently, the
Supreme Court will review the findings of fact by a State court where a
federal right has been denied by a finding shown by the record to be
without evidence to support it, and where a conclusion of law as to a
federal right and findings of facts are so intermingled as to make it
necessary to analyze the facts in order to pass upon the federal
question.[318] It should be noted, too, that barring exceptional
circumstances such as those in Gilchrist _v._ Interborough Rapid Transit
Co.,[319] which involved intricate contracts between the City of New
York and the company, the meaning of which had not been determined by
the State courts, or explicit statutory provisions as in 28 U.S.C.A.
Sec. 1331-1332, 1345, 1359, resort to a federal court may precede the
exhaustion of remedies of State courts.[320]

Suits Affecting Ambassadors, Other Public Ministers, and Consuls

The earliest interpretation of the grant of original jurisdiction to the
Supreme Court came in the Judiciary Act of 1789, which conferred on the
federal district courts jurisdiction of suits to which a consul might be
a party. This legislative interpretation was sustained in 179