Category: National Supremacy
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Supremacy of Laws
Although McCulloch v. Maryland and Gibbons v. Ogden were expressions of a single thesis, the supremacy of the national government, their development after Marshall's death has been sharply divergent. During the period when Gibbons v. Ogden was eclipsed by the theory of dual federalism, the doctr…
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McCulloch v. Maryland
Five years after the decision in Mc- Culloch v. Maryland that a state may not tax an instrumentality of the Federal Government, the Court was asked to and did reexamine the entire question in Osborn v. Bank of the United States.1 In that case counsel…
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Federal Securities
The first significant extension of the doctrine of the immunity of federal instrumentalities from state taxation came in Weston v. Charleston, 1 where Chief Justice Marshall also found in the Supremacy Clause a bar to state taxation of obligations of…
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Government Contractors
In the course of his opinion in Osborn v. Bank of the United States,1 Chief Justice Marshall posed the question: "Can a contractor for supplying a military post with provisions, be restrained from making purchases within any state, or from trans…
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Salaries of Federal Employees
Of a piece with James v. Dravo Contracting Co. was Graves v. New York ex rel. O'Keefe,1 handed down two years later. Repudiating the theory "that a tax on income is legally or economically a tax on its source," the Court held that a sta…
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Ad Valorem Taxes
Property owned by a federally chartered corporation engaged in private business is subject to state and local ad valorem taxes. This was conceded in Mc- Culloch v. Maryland 1 and confirmed a half century later with respect to railroads incorporated b…
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Federally Chartered Finance Agencies
Fiscal institutions chartered by Congress, their shares and their property, are taxable only with the consent of Congress and only in conformity with the restrictions it has attached to its consent.1 Immediately after the Supreme Court construed the …
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Royalties
In 1928, the Court went so far as to hold that a state could not tax as income royalties for the use of a patent issued by the United States.1 This proposition was soon overruled in Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal,<a name=t2 href=#f2 target="_self"…
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Indian Lands
Another line of anomalous decisions conferring tax immunity upon lessees of restricted Indian lands was overruled in 1949. The first of these cases, Choctaw & Gulf R.R. v. Harrison,1 held that a gross production tax on oil, gas, and other minerals wa…
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National Supremacy Clause Interpretation
Although the Supreme Court had held, prior to Chief Justice John Marshall's appointment to it, that the Supremacy Clause rendered null and void a state constitutional or statutory provision that was inconsistent with a treaty executed by the Federal Government, <a name=t1 href=#f1 target="_…
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Operation of the Supremacy Clause
When Congress legislates pursuant to its delegated powers, conflicting state law and policy must yield.1 Although the preemptive effect of federal legislation is best known in areas governed by the Commerce Clause, the same effect is present, of cour…
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Preemption
The General Issue: Preemption (Concurrent Federal and State Jurisdiction)In Gibbons v. Ogden,1 the Court, speaking by Chief Justice Marshall, held that New York legislation that excluded from the navigable waters of that state steam vessels enrolled …
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Federal Immunity Laws
The operation of federal immunity acts 1 to preclude the use in state courts of incriminating statements and testimony given by a witness before a committee of Congress or a federal grand jury 2 illus…
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Priority of National Claims
Anticipating his argument in McCulloch v. Maryland,1 Chief Justice Marshall in 1805 upheld an act of 1792 asserting for the United States a priority of its claims over those of the states against a debtor in bankruptcy.<a name=t2 href=#f2 target=&quo…