Henry A. Suydam and William Boyd, Plaintiffs in Error v. Robert Broadnax and Isaac Newton

This passage occurs, it is true, in the opinion of a judge who dissented from the judgment of the Court in the particular case; but the difference between the judges was, not as to the principle, (for it appears never to have been, as Judge Story says, 'seriously doubted,') but as to its application to the case before them. In the persent case no such difference can exist. The law of the United States says that the Circuit Court shall try it; the law of Alabama says that the Circuit Court shall not try it. The conflict between the two statutes is direct and palpable. It is for the Supreme Court to say which is to prevail. It may not be amiss, on this point of concurrent powers, to cite the principle laid by Chancellor Kent, after analyzing the case of Houston vs. Moore, and other cases, in which the subject had been judicially examined: 'It would seem, therefore, that the concurrent power of legislation in the states, is not an independent, but a subordinate and dependent power, liable in many cases to be extinguished, and in all cases to be postponed, to the paramount or supreme law of the Union, wherever the federal and the state regulations interfere with each other.' 1 Kent's Commentaries, 394. 388-393.