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Nullification, in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal laws that they deem unconstitutional with respect to the United States Constitution (as opposed to the state's own constitution).
The nullification crisis was a sectional political crisis in the United States in 1832 and 1833, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, ...
Though the exact impact of the Force Act on South Carolina's decision to accept the Tariff of 1833 cannot be measured, undoubtedly, it made fighting for nullification a potentially devastating choice. Ultimately, the House passed the Tariff of 1833 by a vote of 119–85 and the Senate passed it by a vote of 29–16. [9]
By a vote of 136 to 26, the convention overwhelmingly adopted an ordinance of nullification drawn by Chancellor William Harper. It declared that the tariffs of both 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and unenforceable in South Carolina. [19] President Jackson could not tolerate the nullification of a federal law by a state.
The Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been used as a prominent tool of invoking nullification, a common tactic of those that believe in the primacy of States' rights. The Tenth Amendment reads as follows:
The Kentucky Resolutions of 1799, while claiming the right of nullification, did not assert that individual states could exercise that right. Rather, nullification was described as an action to be taken by "the several states" who formed the Constitution. The Kentucky Resolutions thus ended up proposing joint action, as did the Virginia Resolution.
For example, during the Nullification Crisis of 1828-1832, John C. Calhoun argued in his South Carolina Exposition and Protest that the states, as the parties to a compact, had the right to judge for themselves whether the terms of the compact were being honored. Calhoun described this "right of judging" as "an essential attribute of ...
The Ordinance of Nullification declared the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within the borders of the U.S. state of South Carolina, beginning on February 1 ...