Resolving Legal Conflicts Between Statutes, Common Law, and the Constitution
The State Statute vs. the Common Law of the State
In the event of a conflict between a state statute and its common law, the state statute will be given precedence. This is so because the legislative branch makes laws of government and represents the most recent perspectives of the state’s elected officials on the issue (Sellers & Scharff, 2020). On the other hand, the common law was created by judicial decisions and may need to be updated or made compatible with current legislative principles. Hence, the statute takes priority as the more reliable and current source of law whenever there is a disagreement between it and common law.
A Federal Statute vs. the U.S. Constitution
The U.S. Constitution takes priority over federal statutes in cases of conflict. For this reason, all other laws, including federal statutes, must follow the Constitution, which is the ultimate law of the land. The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause creates this idea by declaring that “this Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be established in pursuance thereof… shall be the supreme Law of the Country” (Farber & Siegel, 2019). Therefore, if a federal statute is found to conflict with the Constitution, the statute is deemed unconstitutional and unenforceable.
A Common-Law Decision in a State vs. the U.S. Constitution
The Constitution takes precedence when the U.S. Constitution and the common-law decision in one state. The United States’ whole legal system is based on the Constitution, the country’s highest law. Every law that clashes with the Constitution is ruled unconstitutional and invalid, including common law. According to the supremacy clause in the Constitution, federal law supersedes state law, notably state common law judgments (Reid & Curry, 2019). Hence, the Constitution must always be regarded as the supreme source of law in the United States and takes precedence over all other law sources in respect and enforcement.
A Federal Statute vs. a State Constitution
The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that federal law supersedes state law in the event of a dispute. Hence, in a dispute between a federal statute and a state constitution, the federal statute would prevail (Steinglass & Scarselli, 2022). This implies that the federal statute would be upheld and that the state constitution would be deemed invalid to the extent that it clashes with the federal provision. This notion is founded on the idea that, in times of dispute, the federal government’s laws have precedence and that states must follow them.
References
Farber, D. A., & Siegel, N. S. (2019). United States Constitutional Law. Foundation Press.
Reid, R. A., & Curry, T. A. (2019). Conflicts in indigenous law: Courts and federalism in the United States and common law nations. In Research Handbook on Law and Courts. Web.
Sellers, J. S., & Scharff, E. A. (2020). Preempting politics: State power and local democracy. Stanford Law Review, 1361–1419. Web.
Steinglass, S. H., & Scarselli, G. J. (2022). The Ohio State Constitution. Oxford University Press. Web.