Constitutional Opinion No. 2026-0760
Case Information
- Content Scored
- United States v. Peters, 9 U.S. 115 (1809)
- Source
- Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Reports Vol. 9 (5 Cranch)
- Author
- Chief Justice John Marshall (opinion of the Court)
- Publication Date
- 1809-02-01
- Content Type
- Judicial Opinion / Legal-Normative Text
- Opinion Issued
- 2026-07-20
- AFCS Version
- 1.0
Holding
This case sets the permanence of the constitutional order against a state's claim to nullify it. Pennsylvania, asserting sovereignty and the Eleventh Amendment, passed an act declaring a federal court's Olmstead-prize decree "null and void" and shielding the Rittenhouse executrices from "any process whatever, issued out of any federal court." Marshall refused to let it stand: "If the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery; and the nation is deprived of the means of enforcing its laws by the instrumentality of its own tribunals." That is the permanence of the constitutional order at its foundation — a judgment a state may void at pleasure is no judgment (Article XVII); the rule of law and finality of decrees (Article XVIII); and vested rights in the prize proceeds protected from legislative fiat (Article IX). The Standard weighs the federalism cost honestly (Article XII, 62): a state legislature was overruled and its immunity claim denied. But the tension is answered — this was a prize/admiralty matter within federal power from the founding; the Eleventh Amendment was carefully held inapplicable (suit against individuals, not the state, and "no title whatever" in Pennsylvania); and what the state asserted was nullification, not a reserved power — the one solvent of the constitutional order the seventeenth article exists to forbid. A Standard that honors reserved powers must equally honor the structure that makes the union a union. Scored as Legal/Normative text (85/15). Tier 1 nets to 76; the result is 78 — high Mostly America First. Principle scored, not result.
It is the judgment of this Court that Opinion No. 2026-0760 is hereby entered into the record, in accordance with the America First Constitutional Standard. The score stands. The reasoning is published. The record is public.