From Pine View Farm

Life under the Regency 0

Shadows of Massive Resistance.

Dick Polman:

The nullification cause – also known as “state’s rights” – has flared periodically ever since 1865, of course. Virginia’s attempt this week to defy any federal mandate on health insurance is eerily reminiscent of Virginia’s ill-fated attempt, more than 50 years ago, to defy the federal mandate on school desegregation. Virginia and other southern states passed laws to thwart the feds; Arkansas even amended its state constitution to separate the schoolkids by race. But the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously nixed those nullification efforts in 1958, ruling that the federal desegregation mandate had a “binding effect” on the states, and that “no state legislator…can war against the Constitution without violating his undertaking to support it.” And in 1982, while dealing with a commerce issue, the high court again nixed nullification, declaring that “a state statute is void to the extent that it actually conflicts with a valid federal statute.”

. . . But this new nullification effort is not about legal scholarship, it’s about political theater. It’s about ginning up grassroots opposition and flipping off Washington. It’s about scaring the Democrats during the run up to the November elections . . . .

Massive Resistance didn’t work either. But it did a lot of damage along the way.

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