Nullification: What You’ll Never Learn in School
Having just finished a course on the New Deal for the Mises Academy, I’m now offering one on state nullification, the subject of my most recent book. I thought my New Deal course covered issues and sources left out of the typical classroom, but in that respect this course has that one beat.
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. When the federal government exercises a particularly dangerous power not delegated to it, the states must refuse to allow its enforcement within their borders.
I can hear people saying that such a response doesn’t go nearly far enough. No argument there. The trouble with nullification is not that it is too “extreme,” as the enforcers of opinion would say, but that it is too timid. But it gets people thinking in terms of resistance, which has to be a good thing, and it defies the unexamined premise of the entire political spectrum, according to which society must be organized with a single, irresistible power center issuing infallible commands from the top.
That’s at least a pretty good start.
And now… the rest of the story. …..
Harold
