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Tag Archives | Principles of 98

Tired of the Usual Suspects?

By on June 15, 2010 in Nullification 1

From Jake Towne:

A talk given May 20, 2010 to the Concerned Citizens of Upper Perkiomen Valley for Smaller Government on the concept of nullification. Nullification is one of the checks the states have on the federal government where the state refuses to comply with federal law — which are deemed harmful to the state and usually assume powers not delegated by the state to the federal government. Nullified federal laws are deemed null and void in the state(s) where passed and have no force.

Part I:

Part II:

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The Principles of 98

By on April 16, 2010 in Founding Principles 0

A good introduction to the Principles of 98 from Keith Broaders at the California Tenth Amendment Center.  Here’s an excerpt:

In 1798 when the Federalist Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act, the Anti-Federalist led by Thomas Jefferson were outraged. The law passed by Congress made in a criminal offense for newspaper editors and onyone else for that matter to criticize the President and/or Congress. There were a number of cases where editors of newspapers were incarcerated merely for speaking out against the policies of President John Adams.

It was Jefferson’s opinion that the laws to limit the freedom of speech and the press clearly violated the First Amendment.

In an effort to support the Constitution and the rights guaranteed by it, Thomas Jefferson decided that when Congress passes unconstitutional bills and the President signs them in to law there needed to be a way for the states to nullify laws that they felt were unconstitutional. He wrote the Kentucky Resolutions in 1798 and James Madison wrote a similiar document for the state of Virginia. In both documents it was asserted that the legislatures of the states have a legitimate right to determine the constitutionality of laws when they believe that the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches have failed to properly interpret the Constitution

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American Thinker’s Curious Coverage of Nullification

By on March 8, 2010 in Nullification, The Opposition 1

J. Robert Smith writes A Curious Dalliance with Nullification at American Thinker today.  By using three citations from a single page in a single book, he determines that the idea of nullification is mistaken and that those of us who support nullification as a remedy to federal overreach are misguided.  Here are the the article and the comments.  Personally, I found many of the comments to be more enlightening than the article itself.

Mr. Smith’s main points against nullification seem to be:

1.) No support for nullification can be found in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence.

2.) According to one author, Madison said that the Virginia Resolution of 1798 was misinterpreted by people who claimed that it supports nullification.

3.) Nullification is potentially dangerous, as states may also try to use it to nullify “good” laws.

Mr. Smith also says,

The primary argument used by nullification advocates is that the American nation is an association of states, not a union of the people. This argument for an association of states is also used by some to justify secession. In essence, the argument is that the states entered into a contract agreement with one another. In so doing, states surrendered some of their powers to a national government while retaining others for themselves. Where the contract is breached — specifically, where the national government acts beyond its perceived constitutional scope — then a state has recourse to nullify national laws in a declination to submit.

I don’t necessarily agree about primacy, but that argument strikes me as sound.  Since Mr. Smith makes no effort to counter it, I think he has effectively undermined his own premise.  But let’s look at his other points anyway.

With regards to the first point, in his own article Mr. Smith cites the Declaration of Independence, where it says

“That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. [emphasis his]“

By thinking carefully about those words, we might realize that nullification is exactly a way to alter a government which has become destructive to those stated ends.  Thus, we find the support for nullification which Smith overlooked in the Declaration of Independence.

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Nullification in a Nutshell

By on February 19, 2010 in Constitution, Nullification 1

nutshellThe “Principles of 98,” as they came to be known, are rarely discussed in modern history lectures even though these are integral to understanding how our federal Constitution was intended to function. These are the principles of state interposition or nullification that assert that if the federal government fails to check itself through one of its three branches, then it would be up to the states to rein in the feds.

The main basis for the theory is that the states created the national government when they joined the compact and not the other way around. The states therefore retained the power to judge for themselves the constitutionality of federal laws and reserved the right to refuse to enforce them if they went beyond their constitutionally delegated powers. As a matter of fact, nullification was used even before the implementation of the Constitution when the Colonists nullified laws made by the British Monarchy. The concept of a state nullifying a federal law simply means that a state refuses to comply with the law or permit its enforcement within state boundaries.

The man widely regarded as the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison, described just how a federal system would work in his essay Federalist No. 51. Madison, encouraging his fellow countrymen to ratify the newly drafted Constitution, described a system of horizontal as well as vertical checks and balances between the federal and state governments — a system known as federalism. “Hence, a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

Madison, joined by Thomas Jefferson, would later go on to expand upon this in the famous Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. The federal government had recently passed the blatantly unconstitutional and shameful Alien and Sedition Acts to silence and intimidate political enemies. Those despicable acts were instituted by advocates of unwritten constitutional power and a more robust central government. Both Jefferson and Madison argued that the states constitutionally had the right to refuse not only to comply with such unconstitutional actions of the federal government, but also to actively prevent the feds from enforcing them within their state boundaries.

These visionaries and their resolutions gave a voice to a peaceful revolution of constitutional principles that would govern this great nation for years to come. Many states have in fact utilized state nullification to check the federal government throughout the history of our Republic. From the Fugitive Slave Act to unpopular tariffs, states did indeed nullify federal laws they found to be unconstitutional.

Nullification has started to be mentioned in the news, as states have once more started to utilize the practice to resist federal overreaching. Many states have either passed or proposed legislation or amendments to their state constitutions that nullify federal laws in the areas of firearms, medical marijuana, and healthcare, to name just a few.

Cross-Posted from The New American

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Do States Need Permission to Enforce their Rights?

By on February 12, 2010 in Nullification, State Sovereignty 3

The Tenth Amendment Center shared this WSJ Blog on Facebook recently.

It was a pretty short piece that may be summed up in one paragraph.

On its face, it certainly sounds like an amendment that’s worth being mindful of (which one isn’t?). Thing is, however, that any new application or enforcement of the 10th amendment is going to require some new, perhaps forward-thinking litigation, and a Supreme Court that decides it’s high time to breathe new life into the largely moribund amendment.

This leads the reader to conclude that those who believe that our Federal Government is limited, must wait for a minimum of four Supreme Court Justices to come to the same conclusion, and a case for it to be applied. Many of us have begun to look at history for ourselves, and see how the founders would handle it.

For example, Thomas Jefferson in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

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