The United States are currently
debating with varying effectiveness the question stated in the above title.
Self-defined “humanitarians” and those seeking a larger Democrat voter base
think states have this right. They believe that the states and various cities
around the country can cancel out Federal laws concerning immigration and the
handling of illegal immigrants if the local population votes to do so. These
people believe they can mandate avoidance of Federal immigration laws within
their own, specific, geographic boundaries.
Others, believe that Federal laws
outlawing violation of immigration laws should be enforced uniformly and
across-the-board in the whole United States.
The question of nullification of
Federal laws by individual action in the various states has a long and
circuitous history. The first application of the idea of nullification occurred
in 1798 when Virginia and Kentucky voted to rescind the Alien and Sedition
laws.
In the 1820s, laws to apply tariffs
to various commodities caused severe distress in the southern states; and
attempts to nullify these laws were enacted in several states.
A huge crisis ensued between South
Carolina and the Federal Government over the tariff of 1828 and 1832. In 1832,
a South Carolina state convention passed an ordinance declaring the tariffs
unconstitutional. In 1833, the U.S. congress passed a compromise tariff, which
was satisfactory and the S.C. the crisis was over.
Since that crisis, the doctrine of
states’ rights has been asserted again by opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850, proponents of California’s Specific Contract Act of 1863 (which nullified
the Legal Tender Act of 1862).
Opponents of Federal acts prohibiting
the sale and possession of marijuana in the 1st decade of the 21st
Century have caused periodic and sometimes painful civil unrest and damaging
public demonstrations.
Opponents of laws and regulations
pertaining to firearms in the late 1900s up to 2013 have produced serious
opposition to federal law and proposals for state nullification.
Of course, the grand example of
states’ rights nullification acts was the Civil War of 1861.
All of these nullification movements
among the various states of our nation were rebuffed by judicial or legislative
action and/or the popular beliefs of our people. In the case of the Civil War,
only brute force continued the authority of the Federal Government over states’
rights when laws obnoxious to various states are passed.
As stated in my opening paragraph,
the United States is now engulfed in an argument about the disposition of
illegal aliens among us. We are also at odds with one another about what to do
with issues concerning the legalization of marijuana and questions about the
legality and advisability of homosexuality in our population. If history is to
be observed, it seems to me that the nation will finally come around to the
conclusions that Federal law continues to trump state laws; and probably will
win these arguments. Individual states cannot be allowed to make their own laws
in violation of Federal law. If the states prevail, we will live in a chaotic
situation with even more confusion than we are now experiencing.
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