Crossword clues for nullification
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Nullification \Nul`li*fi*ca"tion\, n. [L. nullificatio contempt. See Nullify.] The act of nullifying; a rendering void and of no effect, or of no legal effect.
Right of nullification (U. S. Hist.), the right claimed in behalf of a State to nullify or make void, by its sovereign act or decree, an enactment of the general government which it deems unconstitutional.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
in U.S. political sense of "a state's refusing to allow a federal law to be enforced," 1798, in Thomas Jefferson; from Late Latin nullificationem (nominative nullificatio) "a making as nothing," from past participle stem of nullificare (see nullify). Related: Nullificationist.
Wiktionary
n. 1 The act of nullifying; a rendering void and of no effect, or of no legal effect. 2 removal
WordNet
n. the states'-rights doctrine that a state can refuse to recognize or to enforce a federal law passed by the United States Congress
the act of nullifying; making null and void; counteracting or overriding the effect or force of something [syn: override]
Wikipedia
Nullification may refer to:
- Nullification (U.S. Constitution), the legal principle that any federal enactment which is not "made in Pursuance" of the Constitution under Article VI, Clause 2 is ipso facto null and void.
-
Nullification Crisis, the 1832 confrontation between the U.S. government and South Carolina over the latter's attempt to nullify a federal law
- Ordinance of Nullification
- Jury nullification, a legal term for a jury's ability to deliver a verdict knowingly in contradiction to written law
- Nullification, a form of body modification involving the voluntary removal of body parts
Nullification, in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal law which that state has deemed unconstitutional. The theory of nullification has never been legally upheld by federal courts.
The theory of nullification is based on a view that the States formed the Union by an agreement (or "compact") among the States, and that as creators of the federal government, the States have the final authority to determine the limits of the power of that government. Under this, the compact theory, the States and not the federal courts are the ultimate interpreters of the extent of the federal government's power. Under this theory, the States therefore may reject, or nullify, federal laws that the States believe are beyond the federal government's constitutional powers. The related idea of interposition is a theory that a state has the right and the duty to "interpose" itself when the federal government enacts laws that the state believes to be unconstitutional. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison set forth the theories of nullification and interposition in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798.
Courts at the state and federal level, including the U.S. Supreme Court, repeatedly have rejected the theory of nullification. The courts have decided that under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law is superior to state law, and that under Article III of the Constitution, the federal judiciary has the final power to interpret the Constitution. Therefore, the power to make final decisions about the constitutionality of federal laws lies with the federal courts, not the states, and the states do not have the power to nullify federal laws.
Between 1798 and the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, several states threatened or attempted nullification of various federal laws. None of these efforts were legally upheld. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were rejected by the other states. The Supreme Court rejected nullification attempts in a series of decisions in the 19th century, including Ableman v. Booth, which rejected Wisconsin's attempt to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act. The Civil War ended most nullification efforts.
In the 1950s, southern states attempted to use nullification and interposition to prevent integration of their schools. These attempts failed when the Supreme Court again rejected nullification in Cooper v. Aaron, explicitly holding that the states may not nullify federal law.
Usage examples of "nullification".
In all the great questions which have agitated the country, and particularly in those fearful crises, the Missouri question, the nullification question, and the late slavery question, as connected with the newly acquired territory, involving and endangering the stability of the Union, his has been the leading and most conspicuous part.
His ultimate weakness in the nullification matter, his opposition to internal improvements, his policy of sacrificing the public lands to individual speculators, his warfare against the Bank of the United States conducted by methods the most unjustifiable, the transaction of the removal of the deposits so disreputable and injurious in all its details, the importation of Mrs.
Pinckney gently and beadily makes us realize that Satan is the emblem of the nullification of self-blame.
Hence State sovereignty, and hence his doctrine that in all cases that cannot come properly before the Supreme Court of the United States for decision, each State is free to decide for itself, on which he based the right of nullification, or the State veto of acts of Congress whose constitutionality the State denies.
He took the paper and nodded his thanks, assuming she had been told of the nullification precedent by Old Man Blair, whose hatred of Calhoun never abated.
He sat up, batted the sharp-voiced alarm clock at his bedside into nullification.
In the dreary fluxations of space travel he prepared renditions of the essay in all the remaining dialects of Earth, since the nullification could not be considered complete until every thinkable center of imaginative notions had been uncentered.
I have a dream That one day-down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
Though of course it was not regret, because in the wake of the injection would come nullification of corporeal poisons and oxidants and the arresting of the aging processin short, that which had evaded the best minds for three dozen centuries.
Though of course it was not regret, because in the wake of the injection would come nullification of corporeal poisons and oxidants and the arresting of the aging process—in short, that which had evaded the best minds for three dozen centuries.
For one thing, there was now no nullification of all the puns that grew in her wake.