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Page Number: 52.0

8 

TRUMP v. VANCE 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

these cases on the principle that “the activities of the Fed-
eral Government are free from regulation by any State.  No 
other adjustment of competing enactments or legal princi-
ples is possible.”  Mayo v. United States, 319 U. S. 441, 445 
(1943) (footnote omitted). 

II 
A 
In McCulloch, Maryland’s sovereign taxing power had to
yield, and in a similar way, a State’s sovereign power to en-
force its criminal laws must accommodate the indispensa-
ble  role  that  the  Constitution  assigns  to  the  Presidency.
This must be the rule with respect to a state prosecution of 
a sitting President.  Both the structure of the Government 
established by the Constitution and the Constitution’s pro-
visions  on  the  impeachment  and  removal  of  a  President
make it clear that the prosecution of a sitting President is 
out of the question.  It has been aptly said that the Presi-
dent  is  the  “sole  indispensable  man  in  government,”6  and 

—————— 
id., at 62 (“To cite all the cases in which this principle of the supremacy 
of the government of the United States, in the exercise of all the powers 
conferred upon it by the Constitution, is maintained, would be an endless
task”);  Tarble’s  Case,  13  Wall.  397,  404  (1872)  (explaining  that  States 
have no authority to “interfere with the authority of the United States,
whether that authority be exercised by a Federal officer or be exercised 
by a Federal tribunal”); Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, 530 
U. S. 363, 376–382 (2000) (explaining harm caused by state statutes that
would “compromise the very capacity of the President to speak for the 
Nation with one voice in dealing with other governments”); EPA v. Cali-
fornia ex rel. State Water Resources Control Bd., 426 U. S. 200, 211 (1976)
(“Federal installations are subject to state regulation only when and to 
the extent that congressional authorization is clear and unambiguous”); 
Arizona v. California, 283 U. S. 423, 451 (1931) (“The United States may
perform its functions without conforming to the police regulations of a 
State”); Hunt v. United States, 278 U. S. 96, 100–101 (1928) (recognizing 
that the United States was entitled to an injunction against state officers
interfering with private citizens killing deer in national forest under au-
thority of the United States). 

6 P. Kurland, Watergate and the Constitution 135 (1978).