Is nullification legal end enforcable?

zzzz

Just a regular American
Jul 24, 2010
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The Republican-controlled Idaho House of Representatives became the first elected body in the nation to pass a nullification bill on Feb. 16, when it voted 49-20 in favor of a measure to nullify the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
U.S. health care law not immune to nullification - USATODAY.com

The attempt to stop the health care act continues on many fronts. Idaho is the first one to actually pass a nulification, the repubs own a 27-8 edge in the Senate and the Republican Gov. Butch Otter has said he will sign it so it looks like Idaho is leading the way. Nullification is an interesting concept and is based on the Tenth Ammendment: "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."

Thomas Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions of 1798
1. Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a 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 part, 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 powers 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.



However the Federal Courts have held that the Supremacy clause (article VI, paragraph 2"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.") has given the Federal government total authority (see Ableman v. Booth, 62 U.S. 506, 1859 and Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 1958) and the states have no power to nulllify a federal law. The only ones with the power to nullify is the Federal judiciary or through Federal legislative action.

If acts by Congress are unconstitutional should the states have the right to decide to comply. History has proven that Congress is not above passing unconstitutional acts and laws. But if states have the power to comply at will with laws they deem to be unconstitutional what does that do to interstate commerce and travel. Marijuana laws are being passed in states, yet the Feds still come in and prosecute. Any thoughts here?
 

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