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Originally posted by Darth Jello
This is something that's being debated by several states despite being ruled illegal over 150 years ago and explicitly forbidden in the constitution in order to kill healthcare reform and allow states to enact crazy laws like the child labor bill in Missouri, lower minimum wages, religious persecution, etc.

Basically, nullification is the concept that if a state doesn't like a federal law, or in some interpretations, a provision of the constitution, they can enact a law to ignore or contradict it. This would more or less take us back to the Articles of Confederation. Thoughts?

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Originally posted by dadudemon
They sorted out the "reserved powers" vs "federal powers" with the incorporation of the 10 amendments. the 10th amendment outlines the reserved powers.

Despite that, the federal government slowly ate away of the reserved powers, increasing their share of the governing pie. The major turning point was McCullough vs. Maryland. With a large dash of the supremacy clause, an easy interpretation of the elastic clause, and a justification of the necessary and proper clause, the supreme court ruled in favor of the federal government. This was the precedent.

The next major changes to the federal governments powers were the Civil War outcomes which essentially made the federal government the complete boss with very little reserved powers. It was pretty much "what we say the states have, they have" type of system. On top of that, if there is no justification with the prior mentioned elements, the federal government can sometimes use the commerce clause to flex their muscles.

In fact, almost every case which dealt with state versus federal laws were ruled in favor of the federal government.

So, yes, they sorted out this problem well over a hundred years ago.

The "recent" backlash of "states' rights, damnit!" is definitely recent. Sure, there were always those militia, anarchist, and other crazy groups that bemoaned the Federal Government having too much power. This is due to conservatives not liking a democrat in office. They did not have much room to complain while Bill Clinton was in office because in 1995, Clinton was in office when the first case in a long time was ruled in favor of the states' rights: United States vs. Lopez. That was a big deal for the "reserved rights" people.



However, on topic, the problem is not state laws being violated: it's the violation of the constitution. Since we were almost designed as a dual-federalist system, there are things that the states get to govern. This is a good thing. Things like car-insurance, property laws and some social issues should be left up to the states. The federal government has actually far exceeded their "necessary and proper" role, a long time ago. However, the power reference you made in your post was addressed and is not an issue. The issue concerning that, now, is removing much of the precedent that stacked up in favor of the federal government and, indeed, several cases since the 1995 one are stacking up..but nothing major in dismantling the beast of a federal government.