Maryland, U. United States, U. See also Reina v. Fisher, 6 U. A state requirement that notice of a federal tax lien be filed in conformity with state law in a state office in order to be accorded priority was held to be controlling only insofar as Congress by law had made it so. Remedies for collection of federal taxes are independent of legislative action of the states. United States v. Union Central Life Ins. See also United States v.
Buffalo Savings Bank, U. Pioneer American Ins. Singer, U. Oregon, U. Justia Legal Resources. Find a Lawyer. Please complete the survey below to help us identify what information you would like to find on our website. Have you ever wondered what happens when a federal law says one thing and a state law says another? 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.
What the Supremacy Clause basically says, in plain language, is that the United States Constitution and federal law including foreign treaties are supreme over state constitutions and state law. This is a very important part of the American political structure because it ensures that, where the United States Constitution grants power to the national government, laws enacted by that national government outrank — or take precedence — over laws enacted by state governments.
If the United States Constitution did not include the Supremacy Clause, the various states and the federal government probably would be arguing constantly over whose laws should apply in every situation. The federal government also would find it much harder to exercise its own constitutional powers in the overall national interest.
Whenever a state and a federal law disagree, the federal law will prevail. But how is it determined in the first place whether the federal law and a state law are in conflict? That point is a pillar of the argument for judicial review. In addition, the Supremacy Clause explicitly specifies that the Constitution binds the judges in every state notwithstanding any state laws to the contrary.
The Supremacy Clause also establishes a noteworthy principle about treaties. Under the traditional British rule, treaties made by the Crown committed Great Britain on the international stage, but they did not have domestic legal effect; if Parliament wanted British courts to apply rules of decision drawn from a treaty, Parliament needed to enact implementing legislation.
The Supremacy Clause breaks from this principle. Subject to limits found elsewhere in the Constitution, treaties are capable of directly establishing rules of decision for American courts. The Supremacy Clause responded to this problem: just as state courts were not supposed to apply state laws that conflicted with the Constitution itself, so too state courts were not supposed to apply state laws that conflicted with Article IV of the Treaty of Peace.
While modern scholars have debated the circumstances in which treaties should be understood to establish rules of decision for cases in American courts, the Supremacy Clause unquestionably makes such treaties possible. Within the limits of the powers that Congress gets from other parts of the Constitution, Congress can establish rules of decision that American courts are bound to apply, even if state law purports to supply contrary rules.
Congress also has at least some authority to put certain topics wholly off limits to state law, or otherwise to restrict what state law can validly say about those topics. As long as the directives that Congress enacts are indeed authorized by the Constitution, they take priority over both the ordinary laws and the constitution of each individual state.
But while this feature of the Supremacy Clause was controversial, it is unambiguous. A few other federal statutes have been interpreted as implicitly stripping states of lawmaking power throughout a particular field.
But even when a federal statute does not contain an express preemption clause, and even when the statute does not implicitly occupy an entire field to the exclusion of state law, the directives that the statute validly establishes still supersede any conflicting directives that the law of an individual state might purport to supply.
Every year, courts decide an enormous number of cases that involve whether a particular federal statute should be understood to preempt a particular aspect of state law. Often, the key disputes in these cases boil down to questions of statutory interpretation. If the relevant federal statute includes a preemption clause, what does the clause mean? Should any additional instructions about preemption be inferred?
And what is the precise content of all the other legal directives that the statute establishes, whether expressly or by implication? But apart from disputes about what the relevant federal statute should be understood to say and imply, and apart from any disputes about whether the Constitution really gives Congress the power to say and imply those things, some preemption cases may implicate disagreements about the Supremacy Clause itself.
Of course, the basic principle that valid federal statutes preempt conflicting rules of state law is not controversial.
But different judicial opinions suggest different views about what counts as a conflict for this purpose, and some of those disagreements may grow out of the Supremacy Clause: while there is no doubt that the Supremacy Clause sometimes requires courts to disregard rules of decision purportedly supplied by state law, there is room for debate about the precise trigger for that requirement. Under what circumstances does the Supremacy Clause require judges to disregard otherwise applicable state law because it is contrary to federal law?
The Supremacy Clause definitely does not mean that each state must base all of its own laws on the same policy judgments reflected in federal statutes. For instance, the fact that Congress has chosen to establish federal income taxes, but has mostly refrained from establishing federal sales taxes, does not mean that state legislatures have to make the same choice as a matter of state law.
Of course, states cannot exempt people from having to pay federal income taxes as required by federal law. But states do not have to structure their own state tax systems on the same model; if state lawmakers think that sales taxes are better than income taxes, states can fund their state governments that way. Similarly, the fact that Congress has made the possession of certain drugs a federal crime does not prevent states from following a different policy as a matter of state law.
While states are not in charge of whether drug possession is a federal crime, they are in charge of whether it is also a state crime. In these examples, though, the relevant state law does not interfere with the operation of the federal statute. Federal authorities can enforce the federal income tax or federal drug laws without regard to whether state law imposes a state income tax or criminalizes possession of the same drugs. When application of state law would interfere with the operation of a valid federal statute, modern courts are more likely to conclude that the state law is preempted.
Ever since Hines v. Davidowitz , the Supreme Court has sometimes articulated a broad version of this idea. I do not think that the Supremacy Clause itself compels this understanding of the preemptive effect of federal statutes. In any case where following some aspect of state law would require disregarding a legal directive validly supplied by a federal statute, judges should conclude that the state law is preempted; if judges have to choose between applying state law and applying a legal directive validly supplied by a federal statute, the Supremacy Clause gives priority to the federal law.
But unless state law contradicts federal law in this sense so that judges must choose which one to follow , nothing in the Supremacy Clause prevents judges from following both. When the Supremacy Clause was adopted, judges had long been using an analogous test to decide whether one law repeals another. Ordinarily, statutes enacted by the same legislative body are cumulative: if a legislature enacts two statutes at different times, and if Statute 2 does not say that it repeals Statute 1, courts normally will apply both.
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