When the priority clause was adopted, judges have long used a similar test to decide whether one law overrides another. As a general rule, laws enacted by the same legislature are cumulative: if a legislature passes two laws at different times, and if Law #2 does not repeal Law #1, the courts generally apply both. However, this is not possible if the two laws contain conflicting instructions for the same matter. With respect to laws passed by a single legislator, the courts have traditionally dealt with these contradictions by giving priority to the most recent law. With respect to conflicts between state and federal law, the primacy clause establishes a different hierarchy: federal law prevails regardless of the order of promulgation. But this hierarchy is only relevant if the two laws really contradict each other, so that the application of one would require contempt for the other. In my view, therefore, the preferential entitlement trigger under the priority clause is identical to the traditional trigger for cancellations. In support of this conclusion, there is evidence that the precedence clause was drafted and discussed in light of existing legal doctrine on repeals. In Federalist No.
33, Alexander Hamilton writes about the supremacy clause that federal laws must, by definition, be a top priority. If laws do not operate from this position, then they are worthless, declaring that “a law in the proper sense of the word includes supremacy. It is a rule to which those to whom it is prescribed are bound. This stems from all political associations. When individuals enter a state of society, the laws of that society must be the supreme regulator of their behavior. When a number of political societies become part of a larger political society, the laws which it may enact by virtue of the powers conferred on it by its constitution must necessarily prevail over those societies and the individuals who compose them. While I am correct about the pre-emption test of the priority clause, in some cases, the application of this test requires the courts to interpret the relevant federal statutes in order to identify all the statutes that establish those statutes. This is a more controversial project than non-lawyers might assume. Federal laws are often understood to imply certain things that they do not say at first glance, and legal guidelines that are implicitly established may be just as valid as other legal guidelines. However, different judges have different views on the circumstances in which courts may correctly interpret things in federal statutes (and perhaps the extent to which courts may correctly formulate subsidiary rules to implement those laws). Competing schools of thought include an approach called “textualism” and another called “purposivism.” Since questions of pre-emption are primarily questions of legal interpretation, the role of the primacy clause in contemporary legal doctrine differs from that of many other constitutional provisions. The basic principle enshrined in the clause – federal supremacy – has now been well clarified.
In general, litigants do not dispute the meaning of the clause and do not have conflicting theories as to its scope. Rather, pre-emption cases tend to revolve around the same types of issues – such as textual/deliberate separation and administrative deference – that recur in all types of litigation.13FootnoteSee Article VI.C2.3.4 Current priority clause doctrine. For an overview of the textualist/purposivist debate in legal interpretation, see Valerie C. Brannon, Cong. Rsch. Serv., R45153, Statutory Interpretation: Theories, Tools, and Trends (2018), crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45153. For an overview of administrative deference, see Valerie C. Brannon & Jared P.
Cole, Cong. Rsch. Serv., LSB10204, Deference and its Discontents: Will the Supreme Court Overrule Chevron? (2018), crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10204. The primacy clause makes it clear that the Constitution, federal statutes, federal regulations, and treaties take precedence over similar state laws. The clause allowed the Supreme Court to help build a strong federal government. The supremacy clause was incorporated into the U.S. Constitution because the Articles of Confederation did not contain such a clause. According to the articles, federal laws did not and could not replace state laws. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison argued for the necessity of the supremacy clause, noting that state legislatures had all the powers not expressly conferred on the federal government by Articles I and II. Therefore, he argued, the priority clause was necessary to balance the balance of government. In Federalist No. 44, James Madison defends the supremacy clause as crucial to the functioning of the nation.
Noting that state legislatures were endowed with all powers not explicitly defined in the Constitution, he also stated that subjecting the federal government to different state constitutions would constitute a reversal of government principles, concluding that if supremacy had not been established, “the authority of the whole society everywhere would have been subordinated to the authority of the parties; He would have seen a monster in which the head was under the direction of the members. In Medellín v. Texas 552 U.S. 491 (2008), SCOTUS held that while an international treaty may constitute an international obligation, it is not binding unless Congress has enacted laws implementing it, or the treaty itself is “self-executing.” Legal experts have called this an “invisible constitutional amendment” that departs from the long-standing historical practice of the clause and even its plain language. [19] In Ableman v. Stand, 62 U.S. 506 (1859), the Supreme Court ruled that state courts cannot make decisions that contradict the decisions of federal courts, invoke the supremacy clause, and overturn a decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Specifically, the court found it unlawful for state officials to interfere with the work of U.S. marshals enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act or to order the release of federal prisoners detained for violating that law.
The Supreme Court held that Wisconsin courts could not overturn Federal Court decisions because the supremacy clause established federal law as the law of the land. The Supreme Court ruled that under Article III of the Constitution, federal courts have final jurisdiction over all matters involving the Constitution and laws of the United States, and therefore states cannot interfere with the decisions of federal courts. I do not think that the primacy clause itself forces this understanding of the preventive effect of federal laws. In my view, the fact that valid federal laws are “the supreme law of the land” and that “the judges of each state are bound by it” means that the judges of each state must follow all legal guidelines that are valid in those laws. In all cases where compliance with any aspect of state law would require non-compliance with a statutory directive validly provided for by a federal statute, judges should conclude that state law is anticipated; If judges have to choose between the application of Land law and the application of a statutory directive validly issued by a federal law, the primacy clause gives priority to federal law. But as long as state law doesn`t contradict federal law in that sense (so judges must decide which one to follow), nothing in the primacy clause prevents judges from following both. The precedence clause also establishes a remarkable principle in contracting. Under traditional British rule, treaties concluded by the Crown were binding on Great Britain on the international stage, but they had no domestic legal effect; If Parliament wanted the British courts to apply rules arising from a treaty, it had to adopt implementing rules.
The priority clause breaks with this principle. Subject to limitations found elsewhere in the Constitution, treaties may directly set rules for U.S. courts. The Supremacy Clause was a response to problems related to the Articles of Confederation (the Articles) that governed the United States from 1781 to 1789. The articles clearly lacked a similar provision declaring federal law superior to state law. As a result, federal laws were not binding on state courts during the federal period because there was no state legislation to implement them.