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Page Number: 50

6 

TRUMP v. VANCE 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

that  the  State  could  not  tax  it.    Marshall  recognized  that
the  States  retained  the  “sovereign”  power  to  tax  persons
and  entities  within  their  jurisdiction,  id.,  at  429,  but  this 
power,  he  explained,  “is  subordinate  to,  and  may  be  con-
trolled by the constitution of the United States.”  Id., at 427. 
Noting  the  potency  of  the  taxing  power  (“[a]  right  to  tax 
without limit or control, is essentially a power to destroy,” 
id., at 391), he concluded that a State’s power to tax had to
give way to Congress’s authority to charter the bank.  In his 
words, the state power to tax could not be used to “defeat 
the legitimate operations,” id., at 427, of the Federal Gov-
ernment  or  “to  retard,  impede,  burden,  or  in  any  manner 
control” it, id., at 436.  Marshall thus held, not simply that 
Maryland  was  barred  from  assessing  a  crushing  tax  that 
threatened the bank’s ability to operate, but that the State
could not tax the bank at all.  He wrote: 

“We are not driven to the perplexing inquiry, so unfit
for the judicial department, what degree of taxation is
the legitimate use, and what degree may amount to the
abuse of the power.  The attempt to use it on the means
employed  by  the  government  of  the  Union,  in  pursu-
ance of the constitution, is itself an abuse.”  Id., at 430. 

Even a rule allowing a state tax that did not discriminate
between the federally chartered bank and state banks was 
ruled  out.  Instead,  he  concluded  that  preservation  of  the 
Constitution’s  federal  structure  demanded  that  any  state 
effort to tax a federal instrumentality be nipped in the bud.
Building on this principle of federalism, two centuries of
case  law  prohibit  the  States  from  taxing,4  regulating,  or 

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4 Kern-Limerick, Inc. v. Scurlock, 347 U. S. 110, 117 (1954) (noting that
“recognition of the constitutional immunity of the Federal Government
from  state  exactions  rests,  of  course,  upon  unquestioned  authority”); 
Mayo v. United States, 319 U. S. 441, 447 (1943) (“These inspection fees
are laid directly upon the United States. They are money exactions the