A Tradition of Resistance

The following is the text of a speech given to the North-Central Louisiana Tea Party on 01-11-10

The main topic I wish to speak to you about is state nullification. Is anyone familiar with the concept?

State nullification, whereby a state refuses to comply with a federal measure, became a formal constitutional doctrine in the United States in 1798 when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison penned the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, even though it had been practiced prior to that date.

In the Kentucky Resolution, Jefferson laid down a series of constitutional principles. It began,

“Resolved, that the several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government…”

That statement alone is enough to shock some people today. But it gets better, much better.

“…but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, its co-states forming as to itself, the other party: That the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the constitution, the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common Judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”

Source:
A Tradition of Resistance
tenthamendmentcenter.com