What Pike County is going to find out, I suspect officials already knew. County ordinances cannot contradict state law, even when state law is unconstitutional.
As mentioned on another forum, The County may not prosecute but a State Trooper would put the hammer on you.
As mentioned on another forum, The County may not prosecute but a State Trooper would put the hammer on you.
Intriguing, because there have been multiple cases of the US Supreme Court saying words to the effect: "legislative actions contrary to the Constitution have no effect and are treated as if they were never passed."
The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the Constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act.--Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The Constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.
If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.
Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently, the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.
So then, how can a state-law contradictory toward the Constitution bind counties from assuming laws which are agreeable to the Constitution if in fact the contradictory is void?
Would not anyone prosecuted for so-called "Aggravated Unlawful Use of Weapon" in Pike County have the right to demand a trial with jurors from Pike County? Might the state have some difficulty getting together a jury that would convict someone who was carrying lawfully (albeit contrary to an illegitimate statute)?