Opinion ID: 500380
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Heading: The Concept of Federal Supremacy.

Text: 149 The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States is found in Article VI, Clause 2. It states as follows: 150 This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. 151 In seeking to comprehend the import of the Supremacy Clause, our inquiry of necessity begins with the landmark case of McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (1 Wheat.) 316, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819), where the Supreme Court held that the State of Maryland could not constitutionally levy a tax upon the Bank of the United States. Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the Court, expounded as follows upon the paramount character of the Constitution of the United States: 152 There is no express provision for the case, but the claim has been sustained on a principle which so entirely pervades the constitution, is so intermixed with the materials which compose it, so interwoven with its web, so blended with its texture, as to be incapable of being separated from it, without rending it into shreds. This great principle is, that the constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are supreme; that they control the constitution and laws of the respective states, and cannot be controlled by them. From this, which may be almost termed an axiom, other propositions are deduced as corollaries, on the truth or error of which, and on their application to this case, the cause has been supposed to depend. These are, 1st. That a power to create implies a power to preserve: 2d. That a power to destroy, if wielded by a different hand, is hostile to, and incompatible with these powers to create and to preserve: 3d. That where this repugnancy exists, that authority which is supreme must control, not yield to that over which it is supreme. 153 17 U.S. at 426. In later announcing the unanimous conclusion of the Court that Maryland's law imposing a tax on the Bank of the United States was unconstitutional, the Chief Justice stated: 154 The Court has bestowed on this subject its most deliberate consideration. The result is a conviction that the states have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control, the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by congress to carry into execution the powers vested in the general government. This is, we think, the unavoidable consequence of that supremacy which the constitution has declared. 155 McCulloch, 17 U.S. at 436. 156 A few years later, the Court adhered to the principles announced in McCulloch and held that exemption of a federal institution from state control need not be explicitly provided for by Congress. In Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 738, 865, 6 L.Ed. 204 (1824), Chief Justice Marshall, again writing for the Court, stated as follows: 157 It is contended, that ... this exemption [from state taxation] ought to have been expressly asserted in the act of incorporation; and, not being expressed, ought not to be implied by the court. It is not unusual, for a legislative act to involve consequences which are not expressed. An officer, for example, is ordered to arrest an individual. It is not necessary, nor is it usual, to say that he shall not be punished for obeying this order. His security is implied in the order itself. It is no unusual thing, for an act of congress to imply, without expressing, this very exemption from state control.... The collectors of the revenue, the carriers of the mail, the mint establishment, and all those institutions which are public in their nature, are examples in point. It has never been doubted, that all who are employed in them, are protected, while in the line of duty; and yet this protection is not expressed in any act of congress. It is incidental to, and is implied in, the several acts by which these institutions are created, and is secured to the individuals employed in them, by the judicial power alone; that is, the judicial power is the instrument employed by the government in administering this security. 158 From these great principles there arose a body of law more specifically applicable to the issue presently confronting us: The nature and scope of the constitutional protection which cloaks a federal agent in the performance of his duties. Put another way, that issue is whether, and under what circumstances, a federal agent can be held accountable to a state for conduct prima facie violative of state law but nonetheless performed in the course of his official duties. We turn now to an examination of that question. 159