Moderators: Prof, Judge Roy Bean
Gowan said it's a simple matter of state sovereignty.
"If you look in your Constitution, you will not find there are any police powers granted to the federal government," he said. And Gowan said the 10th Amendment says any powers not given to the federal government are reserved for the states and the people.
"That means the states have the inherent right to use law enforcement,'' he said.
Yeah, right. Good luck with that.The Operative wrote:Proposed bill would require employees of federal law enforcement agencies to first notify the sheriff of the county "before taking any official law enforcement action in a county in this state."
It will be seen from the foregoing statement of facts that a judge of the Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin in the first of these cases, claimed and exercised the right to supervise and annul the proceedings of a commissioner of the United States, and to discharge a prisoner who had been committed by the commissioner for an offence against the laws of this Government, and that this exercise of power by the judge was afterwards sanctioned and affirmed by the Supreme Court of the State.
In the second case, the State court has gone a step further, and claimed and exercised jurisdiction over the proceedings and judgment of a District Court of the United States, and, upon a summary and collateral proceeding by habeas corpus, has set aside and annulled its judgment and discharged a prisoner who had been tried and found guilty of an offence against the laws of the United States and sentenced to imprisonment by the District Court.
And it further appears that the State court have not only claimed and exercised this jurisdiction, but have also determined that their decision is final and conclusive upon all the courts of the United States, and ordered their clerk to disregard and refuse obedience to the writ of error issued by this court, pursuant to the act of Congress of 1789, to bring here for examination and revision the judgment of the State court.
These propositions are new in the jurisprudence of the United States, as well as of the States; and the supremacy of the State courts over the courts of the United States, in cases arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States, is now for the first time asserted and acted upon in the Supreme Court of a State.
The supremacy is not, indeed, set forth distinctly and broadly, in so many words, in the printed opinions of the judges. It is intermixed with elaborate discussions of different provisions in the fugitive slave law, and of the privileges and power of the writ of habeas corpus. But the paramount power of the State court lies at the foundation of these decisions, for their commentaries upon the provisions of that law, and upon the privileges and power of the writ of habeas corpus, were out of place, and their judicial action upon them without authority of law, unless they had the power to revise and control the proceedings in the criminal case of which they were speaking, and their judgments releasing the prisoner and disregarding the writ of error from this court can rest upon no other foundation.
If the judicial power exercised in this instance has been reserved to the States, no offence against the laws of the United States can be punished by their own courts without the permission and according to the judgment of the courts of the State in which the party happens to be imprisoned, for if the Supreme Court of Wisconsin possessed the power it has exercised in relation to offences against the act of Congress in question, it necessarily follows that they must have the same judicial authority in relation to any other law of the United States, and, consequently, their supervising and controlling power would embrace the whole criminal code of the United States, and extend to offences against our revenue laws, or any other law intended to guard the different departments of the General Government from fraud or violence. And it would embrace all crimes, from the highest to the lowest; including felonies, which are punished with death, as well as misdemeanors, which are punished by imprisonment. And, moreover, if the power is possessed by the Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin, it must belong equally to every other State in the Union when the prisoner is within its territorial limits, and it is very certain that the State courts would not always agree in opinion, and it would often happen that an act which was admitted to be an offence, and justly punished, in one State would be regarded as innocent, and indeed as praiseworthy, in another.
It would seem to be hardly necessary to do more than state the result to which these decisions of the State courts must inevitably lead. It is, of itself, a sufficient and conclusive answer, for no one will suppose that a Government which has now lasted nearly seventy years, enforcing its laws by its own tribunals and preserving the union of the States, could have lasted a single year, or fulfilled the high trusts committed to it, if offences against its laws could not have been punished without the consent of the State in which the culprit was found.
