302
Souter, J., dissenting
eral officers from property seized by the United States for alleged nonpayment of taxes and held under an order of the Secretary of War. The defending officials claimed the "absolute immunity from judicial inquiry of every one who asserts authority from the executive branch of the government, however clear it may be made that the executive possessed no such power," 106 U. S., at 220 (emphasis in original), but they lost. The Court rejected the proposition that possession of property by federal officers on behalf of the United States sufficed to immunize the officers from a possessory action brought by a private citizen.4 Lee's suit is seen today as deciding a claim that the officials involved were acting wholly without authority as a matter of constitutional law, since they were barred from dealing with the property by the Government's failure to pay the just compensation required by the Fifth Amendment. See Larson, supra, at 697.
Lee thus illustrates that an issue of property title is no different from any other legal or constitutional matter that may have to be resolved in deciding whether the officer of an immune government is so acting beyond his authority as to be amenable to suit without necessarily implicating his government. See Treasure Salvors, supra, at 676, 695-697 (opinion of Stevens, J.) (like this case, involving state officials' reliance on federal law); see also Tindal, supra, at 222.5 Indeed, the decisions of this Court have so held or assumed as far back as the time of Chief Justice Marshall's statement in United States v. Peters, 5 Cranch 115, 139-140 (1809), that "it certainly can never be alleged, that a mere suggestion of title in a state to property, in possession of an individual,
4 The title claims in this case turn not on a constitutional issue but on federal title law; this makes no difference under Young. See Larson v. Domestic and Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U. S. 682, 698-699 (1949).
5 Whether Tindal is, or must be, amenable to analysis as a federal ultra vires case we need not now decide; its holding that property title is irrelevant to jurisdictional analysis is not open to question. See 167 U. S., at 222-223.
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