No need to argue, I’d just point someone who says “nullification is unconstitutional” to the ninth and tenth amendments.
Nullification, according to these amendments, IS consitutional. About time Americans start using that power.
Nullification is kinda like secession... it’s legal if you have the balls to make it stick.
All you have to say is, “It’s emanating from a penumbra.”.............
What ever happened to Prop C
How about "interposition," which Federalist Daniel Webster advocated in order to protect the citizens of Massachusetts (or was it New Hampshire?) from a suggested federal military draft during the War of 1812?
Yes and no. The SCOTUS has held that the US congress has supremacy over state legislatures, and that federal courts have supremacy over state courts; but they have *never* held that the president has supremacy over state governors.
Thus, when nullification was an issue, the president could only enforce his will by sending in the US Army. G. Washington did it with the Whiskey Rebellion; Andrew Jackson threatened to do it against South Carolina when they tried to nullify a federal tariff; and Dwight Eisenhower did it against governor Orval Faubus (Bill Clinton’s mentor) in Little Rock, sending in the 101st Airborne Division to overwhelm the state National Guard trying to prevent school discrimination.
Second, while acts of nullification are indeed unconstitutional, effective nullification is not. The federal courts have held that congress cannot pass laws that the states must pay for out of their own pocket, the “unfunded mandates”.
And both congress and the federal bureaucracy have for years threatened to cut off federal money unless the states obey unrelated mandates. The School Lunch Program has been loaded with so many such unrelated mandates that some states are passing “opt out” laws, figuring that schools could save a LOT of money by providing their own lunches and NOT following a ton of other mandates.
The most intrusive tools used by the federal government to involve themselves with state authority are both very contrived, and should be questioned.
The first is the Interstate Commerce Clause, which was utterly abused during the New Deal to include ALL commerce, including purely intrastate commerce.
Another is the General Welfare Clause, which was used by LBJ to create the welfare state we know today.
A recent one is the attempt by the EPA to expand federal authority over *navigable* waterways, to effectively ALL waterways, wetlands, and any terrain that leads to waterways, to include ditches, drains, etc.
The Presidents have not missed the opportunity for unconstitutional expansion of power, either. Before Teddy Roosevelt, the “presidential proclamation” was a minor thing. But he turned it into a scheme to seize vast amounts of land from the states and federalize it. Now the vast majority of the land west of the Mississippi is under the control of the federal government.
And this brings up the most constitutional element of nullification: that states may refuse to comply with such blatantly obvious unconstitutional actions by the federal government. It doesn’t matter if they have existed for years and the courts have given them approval.
The states, collectively, do have the power to rewrite the US constitution, if they so choose, and even the federal courts are aware of it. This also implies that the states are collectively able to *interpret* the constitution, just as effectively as the federal courts.
So if enough states choose to nullify, as a group they have far more authority to do so. This is approaching the case with medical marijuana, which is really outside federal authority; demanding taken state lands back; demanding control of intrastate commerce again; and the list goes on and on.