Recent comments

Courts have repeatedly rejected nullification, so there is no "right" for states to reject bad laws. Federal law trumps state law under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, and Article III of the Constitution declares that federal courts have the final say on the constitutionality of federal laws. The pot laws and amendments are NOT direct nullification. Marijuana is now legal under some state's laws but is still illegal under federal law -- which is why you still see the feds cracking down on some dispensaries in states like California. Unless I am mistaken, the states did not pass anything declaring that the federal laws are null and void, or prohibiting federal agents from enforcing federal law in those states. The Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, in contrast, is designed to contradict federal law, and to provide states standing to pursue litigation against federal law. And Tea Party groups are asking governors to explicitly reject the federal health law. Yes, Northern states did try using nullification to reject the Fugitive Slave Acts (and courts rejected those efforts -- see Prigg v Pennsylvania) but nullification is most closely associated with Southern states' efforts to preserve slavery. Its chief proponent was South Carolinian John C Calhoun, who led the effort to "nullify" federal tariff laws, causing the "Nullification Crisis" where President Andrew Jackson received authorization to send the military into the state before both sides negotiated a settlement. Neither side was under any illusion that the real battle was over the future of slavery, which is why the Nullification Crisis is regarded as an important event in the runup to South Carolina's secession and the Civil War. And you have conveniently omitted the most recent attempt to nullify federal law -- the effort by Southern states in the 1950s to resist desegregation and the Brown v Board of Education decision. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Arkansas' effort to resist desegregation in the 1958 case Cooper v Aaron, and with it explicitly rejected the notion that states can nullify federal law. In any case, I have added a line acknowledging that Northern states also used nullification to try and fight the Fugitive Slave Acts.