Prigg v. Pennsylvania

The ruling upheld the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution in which federal laws take precedence over state laws when regulating the same activity. The Commerce Clause of the Constitution is one major avenue for the national government to exercise its authority over states. From the 1930s New Deal era through the 1970s the federal government significantly grew by increasingly regulating many facets of life. By the 1980s states' rights proponents began to reverse the trend. Debates over federal controls continued into the late 1990s focused on proposed national health care reforms.

At the center of issues intensively debated by the founders of the United States was federalism, the distribution of power between the federal and state governments. Dispute over the degree of centralization of political power in the United States highlighted by debates between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison led to formation of the first political parties in the nation. As a result, the Supremacy Clause was written into Article IV of the Constitution providing the primary basis for the federal government's power over states. The article states the "acts of the Federal Government are operational as supreme law throughout the Union . . . enforceable in all courts of the land. The states have no power to impede, burden, or in any manner control the operation of" federal law.

With slavery another major issue, the founders also reached compromise in which the Southern states could continue slavery while Congress received broad powers to regulate commerce. Article I of the Constitution states that "Congress shall have Power . . . to regulate commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States." The Constitution also contained a Fugitive Clause in that states had rights to retrieve fugitives, including fugitive slaves, from other states to which they had fled. However, the Constitution did not describe the responsibility of the state receiving the request or how the request should be made.

Problems soon arose. In 1791, Pennsylvania requested the return of a fugitive from Virginia, but Virginia chose not to comply. Two years later Congress responded with passage of an act more fully addressing apprehension of fugitives from justice and slaves escaping the service of their masters. The 1793 fugitive slave law allowed for their arrest without a warrant, relying only on the oath of the owner or their agent regarding their claim. In 1826, Pennsylvania passed a law in direct conflict by requiring a warrant and testimony of "indifferent witnesses." The federal law protected slave owners "from all unnecessary delay and expense" while state law allowed for the alleged fugitive to ask for a delay while a court heard their case. The owner could be charged with court expenses. Whereas the federal law provided penalties for the hindering owners, the Pennsylvania law only gave the owner a right to seek damages.

Given the association of slavery with commerce in the nation's early years, slavery cases were considered by the Supreme Court as commerce issues focused on property rights rather than human rights. In 1825 in the first slave case before the Court, The Antelope, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that in "claims in which the sacred rights of liberty and of property come in conflict with each other . . . this Court must not yield to feelings which might seduce it from the path of duty, but must obey the mandates of the law." The property rights of slave owners prevailed in the courts.

Regarding division of power between the federal government and states, a number of cases prior to 1840 were decided favoring states' rights to govern their own jurisdictions with minimal influence from the federal government. However, beginning in 1840 the supremacy of the federal government began to be defined. In Holmes v. Jennison, the Court ruled states did not have power to engage in foreign affairs. Next, the Court ruled that federal courts could overrule state court interpretations of state law. Increasingly, questions of states' authority were tied to questions of slavery. In Groves v. Slaughter in 1841 the Court ruled states had the right to exclude slavery.