Federal law does not a priori supersede state law. The Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution reserves _all_ rights not explicitly granted to the federal government to the states and the people. The Civil War was fought, in part, over this contention between the power of the federal government to emancipate slaves and the power of the slaveholding states to continue to allow the practice of slavery. In more modern times, certain aspects of the constitution have been interpreted more and more broadly to allow e.g. the regulation of medical products under the auspices of regulating “interstate commerce” (even if said products are only ever sold in a single state — they can be transported across state lines).From this system design, you can deduce that there _does_ exist a hierarchy in the theory of US government — the Constitution is the law of the land and all other actors and subsystems are subordinate to it. Modifying the Constitution requires significant effort at multiple levels of government usually including (by state law) extensive popular support and supermajorities of representatives.
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