By international law and by the public law of all civilized States the legal jurisdiction of a State is generally recognized to extend over all persons for the time being within the districts under its de facto control. The only exceptions, if exceptions they be, are those coming within the principle of extraterritoriality. A State has jurisdiction over, not only its native-born and naturalized subjects, but all the subjects of other States permanently or, at any given time, temporarily resident, within its borders.

Nowhere, perhaps, has this general constitutional principle been better stated than by Marshall in the great case of The Exchange,1 decided in 1812. In the opinion rendered in this case, the Chief Justice, after pointing out that the jurisdiction of a State within its own territory is necessarily exclusive as well as absolute, goes to show that the exceptions to this principle, generally recognized in practice, are themselves founded upon the will of the State recognizing them. Thus the so-called doctrine of extraterritoriality, though often spoken of as a fiction, namely that the diplomatic representatives and their establishments, and public ships of war, are upon, or are parts of, the territory of the States to which they belong, is not a necessary fiction. Such immunity from local jurisdiction as exists is due to the consent of the local State. That is to say, it is by an exercise of the jurisdiction of that State that these persons are exempted from the operation, though entitled to the protection, of the local law.