Thomas Woods Quotes
Nullification is the Jeffersonian idea that the states of the American Union must judge the constitutionality of the acts of their agent, the federal government, since no impartial arbiter between them exists.
Woods, Thomas E., Jr. Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. Regnery Publishing, 2010, p. 3.
Commonly referred to as the Kentucky Resolution. This concept of Nullification was one of the factors that aggravated the tensions leading to the Civil War. Were the individual States to be the arbiters of whether or not a Federal act was Constitutional or was it to be the Supreme Court.
Soon after Jackson's reelection, delegates from South Carolina, led by John C. Calhoun, moved quickly to declare "null, void, and no law" the Tariff Act of 1832. The president's reaction to the Ordinance of Nullification was swift.
South Carolina did not like the protectionist measures that Congress had passed. Although the Federal Government clearly had the Constitutional authority to regulate interstate and international commerce, South Carolina, led by John C. Calhoun, took the position that any state could nullify a Federal law’s application within their state. Clearly, that was a vision of a nation that would have very different from our history where the Federal Courts were the only institution that could nullify an act of Congress anywhere.
The 10th Amendment reserves powers to the states and limits the Federal Government’s powers. However, there are other clauses in the Constitution, like the Commerce Clause (Article I Section 8), which gives the Federal Government authority and control over Interstate Commerce, which in modern society permeates almost all activities of State government, The result is that the federal government / state government power division has been a political issue and not really a constitutional one. At the time Republicans advocated a literal 10th Amendment interpretation and the Democrats favored a stronger Federal Government with more authority and power as stated by the Commerce Clause. Roy had been trying to explain to his fellow Republican strategists that it is hard to attract Blacks to the remainder to the Republican Platform as long as they were insensitive to what the 10th Amendment meant to Blacks historically. The Southern states cited the 10th Amendment more than any other part of the constitution to justify their right to maintain slavery. It was the Federal Government that ended slavery. Under the rubric of the 10th Amendment the South managed to get rid of most of the racial civil rights Reconstruction reforms that were imposed by the Federal Government on the Southern States. And it was the 19th Amendment that was the authority for Segregation for 100 years. And the terrorism of the Klu Klux Klan and the lynching and terror imposed on Blacks by Southern states claiming the 10th Amendment right to do so. Finally, it was the Federal Government, overriding the 10th Amendment with the Commerce Clause and other parts of the Constitution that passed and enforced the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Desegregation and the end to Lynching and other Southern State-Sponsored terrorism. Blacks will not any time soon accede to having the 10th Amendment literal view of the role of government and if Republicans insist on that there would continue to be very few Black Republicans,
Thomas Ernest Woods Jr. is an American author, historian, and libertarian who is currently a senior fellow at the Mises Institute. Woods is a New York Times Best-Selling author and has published twelve books. He has written extensively on subjects including the history of the United States, Catholicism, contemporary politics, and economics. Although not an economist himself, Woods is a proponent of the Austrian School of economics. He hosts a daily podcast, The Tom Woods Show, and he formerly co-hosted the now defunct Contra Krugman.
