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The principle of the supremacy of federal powers over those powers held by the states is based on the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution and was explained in the early 1800s by John Marshall , the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Of The United States . In the seminal case of '' McCulloch V. Maryland '', Marshall asserted that the laws adopted by the federal government, when exercising its Constitutional powers, are generally paramount over any conflicting laws adopted by state governments. After ''McCulloch,'' the primary legal issues in this area concerned the scope of the powers Congress possesses under the Constitution, and whether the states possess certain powers to the exclusion of the federal government even if the Constitution does not explicitly limit them to the States. CONTROVERSY TO 1865 In the period between the American Revolution and the establishment of the United States Constitution , the states had coalesced under a much weaker federal government, pursuant to the Articles Of Confederation , which gave the federal government very little, if any, authority to overrule individual states. The Constitution strengthened the federal government, authorizing it to exercise powers deemed necessary to rule over the nation as a whole, with a vague boundary between the two co-existing "levels" of government. In the event a state's law should overlap federal law, the Constitution resolved the conflict in the Supremacy Clause in Article VI in favor of the federal government, which declares federal law the "supreme Law of the Land" and provides that "the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." The Supremacy Clause applies, however, only if the federal government is acting within its Constitutionally authorized powers. When the Federalists passed the Alien And Sedition Acts in 1798, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison secretly wrote the Kentucky And Virginia Resolutions , which provide a classic statement in support of states' rights. According to this theory, the Federal Union is a voluntary association of states and if the central government goes too far, each state has the right to nullify that law. As Jefferson said in the Kentucky Resolutions:
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, along with the supporting Report Of 1800 by Madison, became bedrock documents of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party . Those supporters, such as John Randolph , who insisted loudest on states' rights, were called "Old Republicans" into the 1820s and 1830s. Another states' rights dispute occurred over the War Of 1812 . At the Hartford Convention , New England states voiced opposition to President Madison and the war, and discussed Secession from the Union. Nullification One major and continuous strain on the union, from roughly 1820 through the Civil War, was the issue of trade and Tariff s. Heavily dependent upon trade, the almost entirely Agricultural and Export -oriented South imported most of its manufactured needs from Europe or obtained them from the North. The North, by contrast, had a growing domestic industrial economy that viewed foreign trade as competition. Trade barriers, especially protective tariffs, were viewed as harmful to the Southern economy, which depended on exports. In 1828, the Congress passed protective tariffs to benefit trade in the northern states, but were detrimental to the South. Southerners vocally expressed their tariff opposition in documents such as the '' South Carolina Exposition And Protest '' in 1828, written in response to the " Tariff Of Abominations ". ''Exposition and Protest'' was the work of South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun , formerly an advocate of protective Tariff s and internal improvements at federal expense. South Carolina 's Nullification Ordinance declared the Tariff Of 1828 and 1832 null and void within the state borders of South Carolina . It began the Nullification Crisis . Passed by a state convention on November 24 1832 , it led, on December 10 , to President Andrew Jackson 's proclamation against South Carolina, which sent a naval flotilla and a threat of sending government ground troops to enforce the tariffs. Civil War Over the following decades, another dispute over states' rights moved to the forefront. The issue of Slavery polarized the union, with the principles espoused by Thomas Jefferson often being cited by both anti-slavery Northerners and secessionists on the debates that ultimately led to the American Civil War . Supporters of slavery often argued that one of the rights of the states was the protection of slave property wherever it went, a position endorsed by the Supreme Court in the 1857 Dred Scott decision. In contrast, opponents of slavery argued that the non-slave-states' rights were violated both by that decision and by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Jefferson Davis used the following argument in favor of the equal rights of states, as opposed to the declaration that all men are created equal: The Preamble to the Confederate States Constitution begins: "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character..." SINCE 1865 With '' United States V. Cruikshank '' (1876), a case that arose out of the Colfax Massacre , the Fourteenth Amendment was held by the Supreme Court Of The United States to apply only to state actions, not private acts of violence. '' United States V. Harris '' (1883) held that the Equal Protection Clause did not apply to an 1883 prison lynching since the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to states, not to individual criminal matters. The '' Civil Rights Cases '' (1883) allowed segregation by striking down the Civil Rights Act Of 1875 , a statute that prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations. There, the Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause applied only to acts done by states, not to those done by private individuals; because the Civil Rights Act of 1875 applied to private establishments, the Court said, it exceeded congressional power under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment. '' Plessy V. Ferguson '' (1896) held that the separate but equal doctrine complied with the Equal Protection Clause , and marked the beginning of Jim Crow Laws by legalizing ''de jure'' segregation. The Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendment would be largely inactive until the American Civil Rights Movement . Some modern courts up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court still interpret the ''Civil Rights Cases'' as limiting the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Civil War itself and its Constitutional amendments revolved around whether America would become an indestructible union or a collection of states under a Federal Government. By the beginning of the 20th century, greater cooperation began to grow between the State and Federal Governments, and soon the Federal Government began to gain more power. It was early in this development that the National Income Tax was implemented, first during the Civil War and then permanently with the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. Before this, the State had been the highest form of government to which people had to pay taxes, but now another level was added, creating a sense of higher authority for the Federal Government. Soon following this implementation was the Great Depression , the New Deal and then World War II , during which time the Federal Government continued to take on more authority and responsibility. The case of Wickard V. Filburn allowed the Federal Government to even regulate how much food a person could grow on their own land, arguing this affected interstate commerce and so came under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Clause . After World War II, President Harry Truman supported a civil rights bill and desegregated the army. The reaction was a split in the Democratic Party that led to the formation of the "States' Rights Party", better known as the Dixiecrat s, led by Strom Thurmond . Thurmond ran as the States' Rights candidate for President in 1948, losing to Truman. CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT During the Civil Rights Movement Of The 1950s And 1960s , states' rights became strongly associated with Southern racial politics, with proponents of Racial Segregation and Jim Crow Law s denouncing federal interference in these state-level policies. ''. Several states passed Interposition Resolutions to declare that the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown usurped state's rights. With Martin Luther King 's nonviolent campaign for civil rights, a bus boycott, sit-ins, and desegregation attempts by freedom riders (several were badly beaten by white supremists) and others achieved the Civil Rights Act Of 1964 . There was states' rights opposition to voting rights at Edmund Pettus Bridge , which was part of the Selma To Montgomery Marches that resulted in the Voting Rights Act Of 1965 . James Reeb , Jimmie Lee Jackson and Viola Liuzzo are three civil rights workers who were murdered by opponents of civil rights.Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire and Canaan's Edge by Taylor Branch CONTEMPORARY DEBATES In 1964, the issue of fair housing in California involved the boundary between state laws and federalism. California Proposition 14 overturned the Rumsford Fair Housing Act and allowed discrimination of any type on home sales. Martin Luther King and others saw this as a backlash against civil rights. Actor Ronald Reagan gained popularity by supporting Proposition 14, and was later elected governor of California . Pillar of Fire, Taylor Branch, page 242 The U. S. Supreme Court's Reitman Vs. Mulkey decision overturned Proposition 14 in 1967 in favor of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Another concern is the fact that on more than one occasion, the Federal Government has threatened to Withhold Highway Funds from states that did not pass certain articles of legislation. Any state which lost highway funding for any extended period would face financial impoverishment, infrastructure collapse or both. Although the first such action (the enactment of a national speed limit) was directly related to highways and done in the face of a fuel shortage, most subsequent actions have had little or nothing to do with highways and have not been done in the face of any compelling national crisis. Critics of such actions feel that when the Federal Government does this they upset the traditional balance between the state and Federal governments. Current states' rights issues include the Death Penalty , Assisted Suicide , Gay Marriage , doctor-assisted suicide in Gonzales V. Oregon , and the Medical Use Of Marijuana , the last of which is in violation of federal law. In Gonzales V. Raich , the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government and permitted the DEA to arrest medical marijuana patients and caregivers. STATES' RIGHTS AS "CODE WORD" The term "states' rights" has been used as a code word by defenders of segregation, and was the official name of the " Dixiecrat " party led by segregationist presidential candidate Strom Thurmond . George Wallace , the Alabama governor, who famously declared in his inaugural address, "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!", later remarked that he should have said, "States' rights now! States' rights tomorrow! States' rights forever!" Wallace, however, claimed that segregation was but one issue symbolic of a larger struggle for states' rights; in that view, which historians dispute, his replacement of ''segregation'' with ''states' rights'' would be more of a clarification than a Euphemism .Carter, Dan T. ''From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994''. p. 1. On the opening day of the ), declared: "We want that federal government to keep their filthy hands off the rights of the states." Thurmond had been an ardent segregationist, although he publicly opposed segregation after 1970. STATES' RIGHTS AND THE REHNQUIST COURT The Supreme Court's '' for discrimination against the aged and disabled, arguing that these types of discrimination were rationally related to a legitimate state interest, and that no "razorlike precision" was needed. The Supreme Court's '' United States V. Morrison '' (2000) United States v. Morrison, U. S. Supreme Court, decided May 15, 2000 decision limited the ability of rape victims to sue their attackers in Federal Court. Rehnquist explained that "States historically have been sovereign" in the area of law enforcement, which in the Court's opinion required narrow interpretations of the Commerce Clause and Fourteenth Amendment. ''Kimel'', ''Garrett'' and ''Morrison'' indicated that the Court's previous decisions in favor of enumerated powers and limits on Congressional power over the states, such as '' United States V. Lopez '' (1995), '' Seminole Tribe V. Florida '' (1996) and '' City Of Boerne V. Flores '' (1997) were more than one time flukes. In the past, Congress relied on the Commerce Clause and the Equal Protection Clause for passing civil rights bills, including the Civil Rights Act Of 1964 . ''Lopez'' limited the Commerce Clause to things that directly affect interstate commerce, which excludes issues like gun control laws, hate crimes and other crimes that affect commerce but are not directly related to commerce. ''Seminole'' reinforced the "sovereign immunity of states" doctrine, which makes it difficult to sue states for many things, especially civil rights violations. The ''Flores'' "congruence and proportionality" requirement prevents Congress from going too far in requiring states to comply with the Equal Protection Clause, which replaced the ratchet theory advanced in '' Katzenbach V. Morgan '' (1966). The ratchet theory held that Congress could ratchet up civil rights beyond what the Court had recognized, but that Congress could not ratchet down judicially recognized rights. An important precedent for ''Morrison'' was '' United States V. Harris '' (1883), which ruled that the Equal Protection Clause did not apply to a prison lynching because the state action doctrine applies Equal Protection only to state action, not private criminal acts. Since the ratchet principle was replaced with the "congruence and proportionality" principle by ''Flores'', it was easier to revive older precedents for preventing Congress from going beyond what Court interpretations would allow. Critics such as Supreme Court Justice Stevens accused the Court of Judicial Activism (interpreting law to reach a desired conclusion). The tide against federal power in the Rehnquist court was stopped in the case '' Gonzales V. Raich '', in which the court upheld the federal power to prohibit medical use of Cannabis even if states have permitted it. Rehnquist himself was a dissenter in the ''Raich'' case. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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