Many leave out or add to THE critical element here. It is not “state nullification of objectionable, redundant federal acts.” The states have no legitimate power to do such.
It is “state nullification of UNCONSTITUTIONAL federal acts ONLY.” Otherwise, as has been said, you are creating more anarchy than the feds are already creating.
The Supremacy Clause supports and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments confirm that the Constitution is OURS. It belongs to US. It is up to We the People to own this precious document which is the Supreme Law of the Land and the only legal bulwark of the freedom by the Rule of Law against the tyranny of the Rule of Man and his ever-changing whims.
Therefore, we are bound to support the feds within their constitutional limits and but resist the feds outside the same limits. The founders never intended nor is there anything in the Constitution demanding that only the feds interpret the Constitution. Every citizen should know and understand the text of this document as best they can and search out how to rightly interpret the Constitution based on its text and original understanding and intent with the help of sound commentary (I highly recommend Judge Robert Bork) and Court decisions from constitutionally-based (not personal morality-based) opinions.
The practical way to do this on the state level would be either the state legislature or state court demonstrates a good-faith effort to take the Constitution as written and intended and begin applying it to the most egregious and far reaching of questionable federal acts. If after doing so, the state finds the federal act unconstitutional, it should nullify and reject the act because it violates the Constitution as best understood by that state. But the nullification process could have several steps.
One step could be presenting a clear brief of the state’s constitutional research, reasoning, and decision to the feds (probably to all three branches, since all three are charged with “preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution” and, therefore, all three (not only the Supreme Court) are bound to apply sound Constitutional interpretation to their acts and decisions) maybe asking them to reconsider the act in the light of the state’s findings or make a case for why the act is in fact constitutional.
Another step could be reaching out to the other states to find either constitutional-based agreement or opposition.
There are ways this could and should be done in a manner that reflects the desire to uphold the Constitutional Rule of Law in this country as a last ditch effort to avoid cessation and physical conflict and bloodshed. But short-sighted, self-interested politics will have to be put aside for the sake of re-establishing the Constitution and our God-given and constitutionally-protected freedoms from government oppression.
All of this could and should be done right now as we wait and hope for Article V COS to get off the ground and actually succeed which, IMO, is a long-shot. But we should not continue to let the feds ignore our Constitutional rights and illegally pursue unconstitutional acts that take away more of our freedoms by installing government oppression and tyranny.
I don’t have a problem with nullification and Article V BOTH proceeding.
I only have a problem when advocates pursue a one-or-the-other approach.
Or advocates of one approach bad-mouthing the other approach.
It seems to me that the States could easily just refuse to offer any support to enforcement of federal laws.
If the feds want to enforce them, then let them do it,
but don’t expect any local or state cooperation.
Whatever eventually transpires, SOMETHING must be done!
I think that the constitutional republic needs to lose the idea of electing federal senators by either state lawmakers or general voters. State lawmakers need to take turns filling federal senate seats for their states.
While the states would have to keep their federal senate seats filled to comply with the Constitution’s Article V requirement of equal representation in the Senate, disgruntled voters would conceptually be able to use state recall laws to recall their federal senators, vacant federal senate seats filled simply by rotating in the next batch of state lawmakers.