The Doctrine of Nullification is the assertion that any state government which doesn’t like a federal law is free to violate it. It began with tariff disputes and formed the central legal argument the Southern Confederacy used in its attempt to tear the federal union apart. It ignores the supremacy clause of the Constitution, the enumerated powers of Congress, and the exclusive jurisdiction given to the courts to adjudicate disputes involving the states.
When South Carolina used it in 1832 to ignore a federal tariff, President Andrew Jackson sent warships to Charleston harbor, threatened to hang the instigators and declared that nullification was “incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”
