The Genuine Book of Nullification

By Francis Wilkinson Pickens

This book covers the idea of nullification, which in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal laws which that state has deemed unconstitutional with respect to the United States Constitution (as opposed to the state's own constitution). The theory of nullification is based on a view that the states formed the Union by an agreement (or "compact") among the states, and that as creators of the federal government, the states have the final authority to determine the limits of the power of that government. Under this compact theory, the states and not the federal courts are the ultimate interpreters of the extent of the federal government's power. Under this theory, the states therefore may reject, or nullify, federal laws that the states believe are beyond the federal government's constitutional powers. The related idea of interposition is a theory that a state has the right and the duty to "interpose" itself when the federal government enacts laws that the state believes to be unconstitutional. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison set forth the theories of nullification and interposition in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Apr 11, 2021
• ISBN: 4064066450328

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Introduction

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION.

The theory of those who deny the right of a State to judge of infractions of the Constitution, and of the mode and measure of redress, and of interposing (her Veto) to arrest the progress of the usurpation, is that these United States, are not independent and sovereign States—and that the Federal Constitution is not a compact of alliance between the several States (that is between the people of each State and the people of every other State,) as separate, pre-existing bodies, or Commonwealths—each ceding by that compact certain specific powers to a General Government, and reserving all others to themselves. But that it is a form of Government made and adopted by the people of North America, collectively—and that from this Constitution or form of Government these States (as corporations) derive all the powers which they possess, having no right to exercise any other powers than such as are thereby granted to them.

To expose the utter fallacy of such a theory, we need but adduce the simple and actual facts of the early history of our country.

From the dawning resistance of the colonies against the usurpations and tyranny of Great Britain, we find those colonies acting independently of each