For some reason, people treat "nullification" like it's a dirty word. Nullification is a legal procedure taken by states to 'nullify' a federal law that the state deems unjust or unconstitutional. The state then uses its governing apparatus to prevent federal enforcement of the unconstitutional law. This concept, while technically rejected by the United States Supreme Court, is still discussed and regularly used today.

Thomas Jefferson first discussed nullification, claiming it was necessary to prevent federal overreach into the states' authorities. Jefferson saw this as a proper application of the Tenth Amendment, which states that "the powers not delegated to the United States [federal government] by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Allowing the states a legal mechanism to enforce the Constitution, Jefferson reasoned, would assist in providing checks and balances to federal power. Often times, people conflate nullification with secession, thus lumping it in with the stigmas of slavery, the Confederate South and the Civil War. As a result, people often inject unnecessary emotion into "states' rights" type arguments, mistakenly construing such arguments as pro-slavery.

This leads to nullification advocates, most notably among them Tom Woods, to be smeared as a neo-confederate who favors slavery. Woods-a libertarian, whose views are by nature antithetical to slavery-is a respected historian and senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which teaches Austrian economics inexpensively to many students worldwide.
Benevolently-named groups such as Media Matters and Think Progress often attack nullification advocates for such reasons, deeming Woods' and the Tenth Amendment Center's discussions of the issue as "irresponsible."

They claim that, since the Supreme Court has dismissed nullification, and crystallized its supposed negative connotation, the idea ought to be abandoned.

Such smears are immature and distract from the real discussion. Furthermore, they are wholly inaccurate-the Southern states never used nullification to defend slavery. In fact, some Northern states attempted to nullify the federal Fugitive Slave Acts, which mandated the return of any escaped slaves from the South to their owners.

When Pennsylvania nullified this federal law by forbidding the forcible removal of any black person from their state, the Supreme Court dismissed nullification and sided with the slave-drivers in the 1842 landmark case Prigg v. Pennsylvania.

It should be obvious that nullification is anything but pro-slavery. Further, since nullification is merely a process, one cannot judge its moral value. Legal processes can be used for either good or evil, and from there, the policies they enact are what should be morally judged. And, given the nature of the Supreme Court's decisions against nullification, should we not reconsider?

In the past and in the present, nullification has been used as a tool to lift oppression.  For example, every law that expands a state's definition of marriage to include homosexual couples is an act of nullification against the Defense of Marriage Act.

Abridging two consenting adults' freedom to associate ought to be construed as unconstitutional, and nullification allows the states who realize this to allow their citizens to fully express their rights.

State laws legalizing the practice of medical marijuana, which allows millions of sick patients safe access to affordable herbal medicine, nullify the Controlled Substances Act, as well as several other federal and international regulations prohibiting the sale of cannabis. Surely, even if the Constitution's protection of the right to self liberty does not provide people with the freedom to harm themselves, it at least protects their ability to freely heal themselves.

Colorado and Washington believe that the federal government has no business preventing you from harming yourself, and have completely legalized marijuana-in absolute defiance of both the federal government and United Nations. This important act of nullification will help residents of Colorado and Washington to live within their rights, without fear of incarceration.

Several states, including Wyoming, are moving to nullify Section 1021 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which suspends habeas corpus for American citizens suspected of being affiliated with Al Qaeda. The Constitution guarantees all Americans' right to a trial to prove their guilt before they are treated as criminals; this act of nullification is preserving the Fifth Amendment.

In other states, juries are being encouraged to judge whether or not a crime that a defendant is being charged with ought to be a crime at all. Members of the Free State Project in New Hampshire, as a method to prevent innocent marijuana users from becoming incarcerated in a violent prison system by corrupt federal laws, have promoted this method.

If the immature, emotional and unfounded arguments against nullification were abandoned in favor of reason, nullification could prove to be an essential part of America's checks and balances system. The debate must weigh the benefits of this against federal supremacy, and thus, check all of the boogeymen associated with "states' rights" arguments at the door.
Justice Louis Brandeis described how a "state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." I, for one, cannot think of a better application of Jefferson's and Brandeis' interpretations of the Tenth Amendment than nullification.
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