Crandall v. Nevada

"The people of these United States constitute one nation.
"
Crandall v. Nevada
73 U.S. (6 Wall.) 35, 18 L.Ed. 744 (1868).
In 1865, three years before adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, Nevada levied a tax
of one dollar on every person leaving the state by public conveyance and required the
transporting company to collect the tax and turn it over to the state treasury. Later, Nevada
officials arrested Crandall, an agent for the Pioneer Stage Co. at Carson City, for refusing to
collect the tax. In his defense, he asserted that the levy was unconstitutional. After losing in
state courts, he obtained a writ of error from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mr. Justice MILLER delivered the opinion of the court. ...
The people of these United States constitute one nation. They have a government in
which all of them are deeply interested. This government has necessarily a capital established by
law, where its principal operations are conducted. Here sits its legislature, composed of Senators
and Representatives, from the states and from the people of the states. Here resides the
President, directing through thousands of agents, the execution of the laws over all this vast
country. Here is the seat of the supreme judicial power of the nation, to which all its citizens
have a right to resort to claim justice at its hands. Here are the great Executive Departments,
administering the offices of the mails, of the public lands, of the collection and distribution of the
public revenues, and of our foreign relations. These are all established and conducted under the
admitted powers of the Federal government. That government has a right to call to this point any
or all of its citizens to aid in its service, as members of the Congress, of the courts, of the
Executive Departments, and to fill all its other offices; and this right cannot be made to depend
upon the pleasure of a state over whose territory they must pass to reach the point where these
services must be rendered. The government also, has its offices of secondary importance in all
other parts of the country. On the seacoasts and on the rivers it has its ports of entry. In the
interior it has its land offices, its revenue offices, and its sub-treasuries. In all these it demands
the services of its citizens, and is entitled to bring them to those points from all quarters of the
nation, and no power can exist in a state to obstruct this right that would not enable it to defeat
the purposes for which the government was established.
The Federal power has a right to declare and prosecute wars and, as a necessary incident,
to raise and transport troops through and over the territory of any state of the Union.
If this right is dependent in any sense, however limited, upon the pleasure of a state, the
government itself may be overthrown by an obstruction to its exercise. Much the largest part of
the transportation of troops during the late Rebellion was by railroads, and largely through states
whose people were hostile to the Union. If the tax levied by Nevada on railroad passengers had
been the law of Tennessee, enlarged to meet the wishes of her people, the Treasury of the United
States could not have paid the tax necessary to enable its armies to pass through her territory.
But if the government has these rights on her own account, the citizen also has correlative
rights. He has the right to come to the seat of government to assert any claim he may have upon
that government, or to transact any business he may have with it. To seek its protection, to share
its offices, to engage in administering its functions, he has a right to free access to its sea-ports,
through which all the operations of foreign trade and commerce are conducted, to the
sub-treasuries, the land offices, the revenue offices, and the court of justice in the several states,
and this right is in its nature independent of the will of any state over whose soil he must pass in
the exercise of it.
The views here advanced are neither novel nor unsupported by authority. The question
of the taxing power of the states, as its exercise has affected the functions of the Federal
government, has been repeatedly considered by this court, and the right of the states in this mode
to impede or embarrass the constitutional operations of that government, or the rights which its
citizens hold under it, has been uniformly denied.
The leading case of this class is that of McCulloch v. Maryland [1819]. ...
It is not possible to condense the conclusive argument of Chief Justice Marshall in that
case, and it is too familiar to justify its reproduction here; but an extract or two, in which the
results of his reasoning are stated, will serve to show its applicability to the case before us.
"That the power of taxing the bank by the states," he says, "may be exercised so as to destroy it,
is too obvious to be denied. But taxation is said to be an absolute power which acknowledges no
other limits than those prescribed by the Constitution; and, like sovereign power of any
description, is trusted to the discretion of those who use it. But the very terms of this argument
admit that the sovereignty of the state in the article of taxation is subordinate to, and may be
controlled by, the Constitution of the United States." ...
It will be observed that it was not the extent of the tax in that case which was complained
of, but the right to levy any tax of that character. So in the case before us, it may be said that a
tax of one dollar for passing through the state of Nevada, by stage coach, or by railroad, cannot
sensibly affect any function of the government, or deprive a citizen of any valuable right. But if
the state can tax a railroad passenger one dollar, it can tax him $1,000. If one state can do this,
so can every other state. And thus one or more states covering the only practicable routes of
travel from the east to the west, or from the north to the south, may totally prevent or seriously
burden all transportation of passengers from one part of the country to the other. ...
Those principles, as we have already stated them in this opinion, must govern the present
case.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of the State of Nevada is, therefore, reversed, and the
case remanded to that court, with directions to discharge the plaintiff in error from custody.
Mr. Justice CLIFFORD. ...
... I hold that the act of the state legislature is inconsistent with the power conferred upon
Congress to regulate commerce among the several states, and I think the judgment of the court
should have been placed exclusively upon that ground. ...
The Chief Justice [CHASE] also dissents, and concurs in the views I have expressed.

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"The people of these United States constitute one nation.

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