Thank you for the answer. And now for your questions:
So what purpose do you see in the Supreme Court? What role would you have it play?
I find Mr. Madison’s analysis in his Report on the Virginia Resolutions quite reasonable:
”...(I)t is objected, that the judicial authority is to he regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution in the last resort...
”...(T)he proper answer to the objection is, that the resolution of the General Assembly...supposes that dangerous powers, not delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that the judicial department, also, may exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of the Constitution; and, consequently, that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution, to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated authority as well as by another--by the judiciary as well as by the executive, or the legislature.
”However true, therefore, it may be, that the [federal] judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the [federal] government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.”
John Taylor provided some additional thoughts on the matter, beginning with the records of the constitutional convention (italics in the original):
June 8th, Mr. Pinckney, seconded by Mr. Madison, moved to strike out the following words in the sixth resolution: negative all laws passed by the several states contravening, in the opinion of the national legislature, the articles of the union, or any treaties subsisting under the authority of the union," and to insert the following words in their place, namely, "to negative all laws which to them shall appear improper." This motion was rejected, only Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, voting in the affirmative. It comprised the precise negative over state laws now claimed by the supreme court...
June 13. It was moved by Mr. Randolph, seconded by Mr. Madison, to adopt the following resolution respecting the national judiciary, namely, "that the jurisdiction of the national judiciary shall extend to cases which respect the collection of "the national revenue, impeachments of any national officers and questions which involve the national peace and harmony." It passed in the affirmative. These resolutions ought to be kept in mind, until we come to the consideration of the Federalist, as the origin of a construction of the constitution by Mr. Madison, upon which the pretension of the federal court to a supremacy over the laws of states and the articles of the union is founded. The jurisdiction of the federal judiciary is extended by the constitution to cases of revenue, but not to cases of impeachment, or to questions which involve the national peace and harmony. It is very remarkable that the very jurisdiction now claimed was actually proposed, considered, and rejected, together with the jurisdiction proposed in cases of impeachment as appears from the absence of both in the specifick statement of federal jurisdiction.
On [June 18], Colonel Hamilton read a plan of government...It is needless to waste time in proving, that this project comprised a national government, nearly conforming to that of England...
By Colonel Hamilton's project, the states were fairly and openly to be restored to the rank of provinces, and to be made as dependent upon a supreme national government, as they had been upon a supreme British government. Their governors were to be appointed by the national government, and invested with a negative upon all state laws; and all their laws, contrary to the laws of the supreme government, were to be void. The frankness of this undisguised proposition was honourable, and illustrates the character of an attempt to obtain a power for the federal government, substantially the same, not by plain and candid language, like Colonel Hamilton's, but by equivocal and abstruse inferences from language as plain, used with the intention of excluding his plan of government entirely. A power in the supreme federal court to declare all state laws and judgments void, which that court may deem contrary to the articles of the union, or to the laws of Congress; and also to establish every power, which Congress may infer from those delegated; comes fully up to the essential principle of Colonel Hamilton's plan; except that the court will both virtually, and directly, control the legislative, executive, and judicial state departments, by a supremacy exactly the same with that exercised by the British king and his council over the same provincial departments.
The propositions of August the 18th, seem to have been the last considerable struggle for a national government...Their rejection was a necessary consequence of substituting a federal for the national government zealously contended for...The proposals for a national government and its negative over the state acts, were really made. They were opposed by the state deputies, who had a knowledge of them. They were rejected. A different form of government was promulgated. It contained no such negative. The states expounded its meaning to be federal, by a positive reservation of rights not delegated. And now they are told that the devil, thus repeatedly exorcised, still remains in the church...
John Taylor, New Views of the Constitution of the United States, 1823
I apologize for the length (there’s actually quite a lot more that is equally applicable). The record of the convention is quite clear: the delegates considered several plans for a national government, with the power to “negative” State laws – and all such plans were rejected. A federal government was adopted in its stead.
In answer to your questions, I see the high court as “supreme” over the “inferior” federal courts (both descriptive terms from Article III), and “the departments of the [federal] government.” But the suggestion that the federal government be given a “negative” over State laws was suggested - repeatedly – at the Philadelphia convention, and rejected - repeatedly – by the delegates. And as Mr. Madison, Mr. Taylor, and Mr. Jefferson noted, the States as parties to the constitutional compact reserved the right to judge “in the last resort” regarding the meaning of the Constitution.