The Nullifiers
...it is important to strengthen the State governments; and as this cannot be done by any change in the Federal Constitution (for the preservation of that is all we need contend for), it must be done by the States themselves... --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, December 23, 1791
The curious current trend among a particular group of state officials to invoke Jeffersonian “states’ rights” principles to “nullify” federal laws with which they disagree would be amusing for its sheer misguided quaintness if it was not such a rank misuse of Jefferson’s fundamental hopes for the U.S. Constitution and his vision of the relation of the states to it.
Jefferson’s brief infatuation with nullification was ignited by what he saw as a dagger to the very heart of the young republican government: The Alien and Sedition Acts. To Jefferson, the acts were rank violations of the rights of individuals and of individual states. They appeared as a “rod of iron” that must be “arrested at the threshold” before corrupted Federalists could destroy the fragile constitutional foundation of the young republic and reconstruct on its ruins a despotic monarchy with themselves at the helm. Jefferson’s response, with James Madison’s help, was to call on the people of Kentucky and Virginia in 1798 to rise up against a national government that had clearly forfeited its legitimacy by threatening its fundamental constitutional forms. Jefferson therefore saw nullification as the best way to reestablish the “beautiful equilibrium on which our constitution is founded” by restoring some semblance of balance in the complex system of interlocking levels of government that American state-builders concocted in 1787.
Modern would-be nullifiers appear to stand on less certain historical footing. Officials such as Georgia’s insurance commissioner, a Republican who just happens to be in the midst of a race for governor, base their arguments on articulated opposition to the expansion of federal power and the prospective financial commitment of states to provide health care for their citizens. Leaving aside Jefferson’s insistence that health is a more “desirable” and “lovely” possession than even knowledge, the arguments proffered by today’s states’ rights advocates–which seem to be based primarily on a distasteful blend of bureaucratic inconvenience and partisan posturing–hardly rise to the standard set by Jefferson in the Kentucky Resolutions. To Jefferson, nullification was a resolutely necessary means of redeeming and defending America’s experiment in a republican empire of liberty, rather than a way to gain short-term political advantage and sidestep the cost of caring for the health of fellow citizens. Far from being the heirs to Jefferson’s constitutional principles, the new nullifiers seem more like apostates from them.
Taylor Stoermer is an Invited Research Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
Comments
I think that the terms "States Rights" and "strict construction[ist]" are so politically charged that their use almost always indicates an intent to paint conservatives in a negative light.
"States rights" is so closely associated with slavery that its use today is often calculated to denigrate the character of anyone who adopts the Constitutional premise that the authority of the Federal Government is limited to those powers as enumerated in the document, with all residual powers reserved to the people as elucidated by the Tenth Amendment which states; "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."
As such, I view the unqualified use of the term, as an insinuative ad hominem.
Although the term "strict constructionist" isn't quite as pejorative, it does suggest that those using it consider antediluvian, anyone who agrees with Jefferson's premise that the Constitution was put in writing in order to corral the congress [and presumably also the judiciary, bound to apply its terms fairly and impartially-regardless of the outcome] in order to protect from the dangers of unfettered legislative, executive, prosecutorial and judicial discretion.
When referring to Jefferson’s “strict constructionist” streak, don’t overlook the fact that he couldn’t find Constitutional justification for the Louisiana Purchase. National security, expediency and opportunism eventually trumped his reservations. The Constitution was important, but so were the British, French and Spanish guns.
I don’t know how he would’ve felt about a national health scheme, but I suspect he, himself, wouldn’t know, either. We overlook his pragmatism while uncreatively (anachronistically) trying to ascribe his words to one or other pole of contemporary politics. To inveigh against the recent health care legislation through Jefferson is, at best, another right/left muddling of history that entirely dismisses the ambiguity of his time, and ours.
Do you really believe that Jefferson himself was not seen as a practitioner of “partisan posturing” when he authored the Kentucky Resolutions? Of course he was. The Federalists who had passed the Sedition Act argued that it was Constitutional- in spite of its manifest violation of the Bill of Rights- just as the proponents of present usurpations spin weak rationalizations in “constitutional” defense of a bill which operates so plainly and so drastically outside the realm of legitimate constitutional authority as to put the lie to this argument the instant it is made.
Jefferson’s vociferous opposition was very much “partisan” in the context of the political spectrum in which he operated, and this in no sense rendered it illegitimate, just as the similar outcry taking place as we speak is not somehow delegitimized by the fact that it arises largely from one end of our own, at least as it is perceived.
To address the specific issue of healthcare from a Jeffersonian vantage point:
1. The fact that Jefferson extolled the importance of good health utterly fails as an argument that he was amenable to government take-overs of the medical industry; the principle underlying this suggestion is patently absurd and thoroughly un-Jeffersonian. Jefferson certainly believed, for instance, that farming and growing crops was a good and crucial matter of import, yet he wrote that “Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want (for) bread.”
2. The healthcare bill which has recently passed is utterly unreconcilable with any Jeffersonian reading of the Constitution; Jefferson was a strict constructionist who went so far as to argue that the Federal government could not, for example, establish a national bank or construct roads or canals without a constitutional amendment. Declaring their authoritarian control over nigh a fifth of the US economy in an industry never so much as mentioned in the Constitution is an act so far outside the realm of their valid power as Jefferson (rightly) understood it that I might fear for his health were the news sprung on him suddenly.
3. Jefferson actually did address a particular healthcare issue during his presidency, in 1805, during a wave of fever spreading from Europe. Jefferson’s policy was that the Federal government, given its power over foreign relations, borders and what-have-you, could verify the state of those who sailed into the country, but that any government action regarding the fever in the internal United States was left up to “state officials charged with the care of the public health”- another example of Jefferson\’s strong support for states’ rights, regardless of the repugnance the idea might carry for pseudo-Jeffersonians 200 years later.
By the way it is full time for ‘progressives’ to reclaim their heritage thru Jefferson and The USA Constitution instead of leaving it as a kind of fiefdom for the right and supporters of Corporate and other factional power??? Does anybody see eye to eye with me on this :) ?
Categories
Most Recent Posts
Posts by Author
Monthly Archive
- March 2013 (5)
- February 2013 (2)
- January 2013 (3)
- December 2012 (5)
- November 2012 (3)
- October 2012 (2)
- September 2012 (2)
- August 2012 (6)
- July 2012 (6)
- June 2012 (4)
- May 2012 (4)
- April 2012 (2)
- March 2012 (4)
Fascinating topic. Thank you. Jefferson clearly favored results and practicalities over his interpretation of the Constitution. Arguably his greatest achievement as President, the Louisiana Purchase, was in direct violation of his definition of federal power and authority.