What is “nullification?”
The doctrine that Federal laws are subject to being overturned by any state.
Prior to the Civil war, nullification was widely promoted by John Calhoun, the great Southern advocate of slavery. Later the doctrine was touted as justifying segregation. Now it is being revived by the radical Republicans in everything from Obamacare to the laws regulating how we handle illegal immigrants.
These neo confederates seem unaware that Article VI of the Constitution states: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof… shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”
The fringe says this was overridden by the Xth amendment:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.[2“
The best-known comment of the Xth amendment comes from a unanimous Supreme Court decision in 1941 by Justice Harlan Stone in United States v. Darby Lumber where Stone wrote:
“The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers”