Anti-Stimulus Arguments Citing Tenth Amendment a ‘Troubling’ Echo of Civil War-Era Discontent

This entry was posted by owl and bear staff on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 2:00 pm.

How do old ideas–and bad ones like Civil War-era “Nullification”–still find their way forward in difficult times?

In the wake of the passage of the stimulus bill, it was widely reported that a bevy of states, many of them so-called “red” states, entertained legislation purporting to declare the federal legislation “unconstitutional”–as, allegedly, a violation of rights guaranteed the states under the Tenth Amendment–and asserting a right of individual states to ignore the law. Stripped of the rhetoric about the immorality of the stimulus package, what these states are proposing is plain and simple a constitutional scheme under which states have a right to “nullify” any federal laws that they deem to intrude on their prerogatives.

[FindLaw]