Agreed
Not agreed. From wikipedia(maybe not the best cite, but usually pretty good for this sort of stuff):
Pre-emption was mentioned. Here is a case concerning the Sedition Act I am familiar with.
2. The federal statutes touch a field in which the federal interest is so dominant that the federal system must be assumed to preclude enforcement of state laws on the same subject. Pp. 504-505.
- Enforcement of state sedition acts presents a serious danger of conflict with the administration of the federal program. Pp. 505-510.
I am guessing the Court issued a similar reasoning pattern to divest states of the Nuclear power in question.
Not sure what you’re disagreeing with, exactly; it’s still the easy part. Implied preemption requires an analysis of both the scope of the preemption and Congress’ intent.
The disagreement goes back to your post #15. I think you were wrong. I interpreted your subsequent posts as defending that original one. If that’s not right, then we don’t disagree.
At any rate, I don’t think that just because a law has been on the books for decades that makes it constitutional. The OP is looking at this from the constitutional standpoint, despite the clumsy language of “states’ rights”.
The origin of nuclear regulation was military, and nuclear regulations still reflect a strong national security component… No individual state has ever had the resources to construct and operate a nuclear power reactor. The ore is mined here, refined there, encapsulated into fuel rods elsewhere and, with few exceptions, delivered across state lines under federal transportation rules to the operating plant. Invoking states rights in things inherently interstate is a waste of energy.
Ah. No, my subsequent posts were explaining federal preemption generally. The scope of federal preemption in nuclear safety regulation was addressed by SCOTUS in PG & E v. State Energy Comm’n, 461 U.S. 190 (1983). The trial court in the Vermont case that the state was shutting down the plant based on safety concerns, making it a federal matter.
The only areas in which state law is not precluded are those related to economic issues or otherwise outside the scope of the Atomic Energy Act, Nuclear Waste Act, etc., such as tort liabilty for nuclear accidents.
ETA: Vermont could have shut down the plant on the grounds that it didn’t need the additional capacity or it wanted to rezone the land or all sorts of other things. It just couldn’t do it on safety grounds.
Oddly enough, that’s not the formulation the Constitution gives. That document says that the federal government has only those powers given to it by the Constitution, and no more; states, in contrast, have the power to do anything they wish, except if it conflicts with one of the areas the federal government’s been given power.
Well, until the Bill of Rights was incorporated to the states, thus meaning there are things the constitution says that neither state nor federal government can do.
Not all of the BoR has been incorporated, and that’s an entirely different matter from what we’re talking about anyway.
If Vermont is worried about radioactivity and leakage (after the NRC granted the plant a 20 year extension), where’s the EPA in all of this?
Or was the vote a knee-jerk reaction to them being a coastal state and what happened at the Fukushima plant last year?
We’re talking about a power plant that supplies the state with 70% of its power. That’s huge. What was VT’s back-up plan for energy?
The first part was a reflection on the practice rather than the Constitutional definition.
I don’t understand this part. Where have we allowed the states to override federal law without chaos resulting? I suppose there’s an example to be found somewhere, but I think the preponderance of cases will show federal law trumping state’s in some messy way if the states do not cooperate.
Here is one case I had in my head where federal law did not supercede/pre-empt state law.
It’s nothing to celebrate. The OP’s linked article reminds us Vermont Yankee has a long history or problems, troubles and outright lying to the state and the public about it.
When the state asked if VY had underground pipes that might leak radiation into the environment the way it had already happened at similar plants, they said they didn’t have any pipes and no radiation leakage danger. Turns out it had underground pipes leaking radiation.
That’s inexcusable lying, or inexcusably gross incompetence. I don’t blame Vermont for wanting more control and oversight over these nuclear cowboys.
That’s not the same thing as the states “overriding” federal law.
That’s different from what you originally said:
The states don’t need permission from the Feds to act. They do it all the time without permission, and we don’t have “chaos”.
But beyond that, there is the issue of plenary vs limited power that we’ve gone over numerous times on this MB. The states are presumed to have whatever power is not explicitly disallowed by the constitution. The feds are presumed to have only those powers given to it by the constitution.
You mean because it dealt with ILL tort law only?
It isn’t in the same ball park. The federal law specifically did not encompass the propellor guard in question. There was no federal law to supercede.
Because the feds did not intend to preempt state law in that area. TriPolar appears to be asking whether state law has ever been allowed to preempt federal law, not whether federal law has ever not preempted state law.
The answer, of course, is no; either the enactment is within the power of Congress, in which case it supercedes contrary state law, or it isn’t, in which case it’s invalid regardless of contrary state legislation.
Missed the edit window. I should have said that states are presumed, from the standpoint of the feds, to have…
The sates, of course, have their own constitutions that limit their power. But that has nothing to with the relationship between the feds and the states, except that a state constitution cannot override the US constitution.
Oh I see what he is saying now. Will need to research that.