Sherman Booth, a Wisconsin abolitionist newspaper editor, was arrested by federal marshals for helping a fugitive slave escape in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The Wisconsin Supreme Court twice issued writs of habeas corpus ordering his release, declaring the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional and asserting that a state court could free a prisoner held under federal authority. A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roger Taney (author of Dred Scott two years earlier), reversed emphatically. The Court held that state courts have no jurisdiction to interfere with federal prisoners or to second-guess the constitutionality of federal statutes, and it upheld the Fugitive Slave Act as a valid exercise of Congress's power under the Fugitive Slave Clause of Article IV. Taney's opinion is one of the most forceful nineteenth-century statements of the Supremacy Clause and of the independence of the federal judiciary from state control. The immediate political effect was inflammatory — Wisconsin's legislature passed resolutions of defiance echoing the language of nullification — but the constitutional principle endured. Ableman v. Booth remains a foundational precedent that state courts cannot use habeas corpus to release federal detainees, and it is regularly cited today whenever states attempt to obstruct federal enforcement, from civil rights orders to immigration detentions.