To define the serviceman's authority, written regulations were consulted to determine whether the act of driving the government's car was authorized. Finding that the regulations did not permit use of the vehicle on this occasion, the serviceman was found not to be acting within the scope of his employment. In finding that there were no regulations either permitting or requiring such examinations, the United States was found not liable. Thus the above cases adequately demonstrate that a government employee must have some specific delegated authority, based upon statutes, regulations or delegation orders, in order to be authorized to act in the premises. The absence of such authority, when challenged, therefore requires a holding that the employee's acts were unauthorized and thus beyond the scope of his employment.
Immunity depends upon delegated authority.
When a citizen challenges the acts of a federal or state official as being illegal, that official cannot just simply avoid liability based upon the fact that he is a public official. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government, and every man who by accepting office participates in its functions is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the authority which it gives. If such be the law of this country, it sanctions a tyranny which has no existence in the monarchies of Europe, nor in any other government which has a just claim to well-regulated liberty and the protection of personal rights.