Finally, in 1832, South Carolina, first in a State convention and then by her legislature, amplified while professing to repeat the claim of the Kentucky resolutions of 1798, declared the tariff imposed by Congress to be null and void as regarded herself, and proceeded to prepare for secession and war. In none of these cases was the dispute fought out either in the courts or in the field[1]; and the questions as to the right of a State to resist Federal authority, and as to the means whereby she could be coerced, were left over for future settlement. Settled they finally were by the Civil War of 1861-65, since which time the following doctrines may be deemed established:—
No State has a right to declare an act of the Federal government invalid.[2]
No State has a right to secede from the Union.
The only authority competent to decide finally on the constitutionality of an act of Congress or of the national executive is the Federal judiciary.[3]
Any act of a State legislature or a State executive conflicting with the Constitution, or with an act of the National government done under the Constitution, is really an act not of the State government, which cannot legally act against the Constitution, but of persons falsely assuming to act as such govern-
- ↑ The Acts complained of by Kentucky and Virginia provoked a reaction which led to the overthrow of the Federalist party which had passed them. Of the most important among them, one was repealed and the other, the Sedition Act, expired in 1801 by effluxion of time. Jefferson, when he became President in that year, showed his disapproval of it by pardoning persons convicted under it. The Embargo was raised by Congress in consequence of the strong opposition of New England. In these cases, therefore, it may be thought that the victory substantially remained with the protesting States, while the resistance of South Carolina to the tariff was settled by a compromise.
- ↑ Of course, as already observed, a State officer or a private citizen may disregard an act of the Federal government if he holds it unconstitutional. But he does so at his peril.
- ↑ Any court, State or Federal, may decide on such a question in the first instance. But if the question be a purely political one, it may be incapable of being decided by any court whatever (see Chapter XXIV.), and in such cases the decision of the political departments (Congress or the President, as the case may be) of the Federal government is necessarily final, though, of course, liable to be reversed by a subsequent Congress or President. The cases which arose on the Reconstruction Acts, after the War of Secession, afford an illustration. The attempts made to bring these before the courts failed, and the acts were enforced. See Georgia v. Stanton, 6 Wall. p. 57.
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