What is the difference between nationalist and states rights

The legislature of Georgia was so angered by the Court's decision that it passed a resolution declaring that anyone who tried to enforce it would be "hanged without the benefit of clergy. The 11th Amendment has been more broadly interpreted later on to prohibit suits against states for damages in federal court even by the state's own citizens. The cause of the rights of states had its champions in the first decades of the nineteenth century, including Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, among many others.

So did the cause of building a strong national government, with its champions including John Adams and the chief justice he appointed, John Marshall. Chief Justice Marshall's views were reflected in several important Court decisions broadly interpreting the powers of Congress under the "Necessary and Proper Clause" McCulloch v Maryland , upholding the power of Congress to create a national bank and Gibbons v Ogden , and upholding the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause to regulate steamboat traffic between the states.

The Civil War, of course, was fought over the question of whether states should have the right to protect the institution of slavery. After that war, the ratification of the 14th Amendment imposed important restrictions on the rights of states to regulate the lives of persons within its jurisdiction.

During the course of the twentieth and on into the twenty-first centuries, the Court turned again and again to the 14th Amendment largely through its doctrine that applied--or "incorporated"--the Bill of Rights to the states to overturn state laws restricting the rights of speakers, criminal defendants, private property owners, gun owners, members of racial and ethnic minorities, and others.

The Court has found in the Constitution other limitations on states as well. Most significantly, it has interpreted the Commerce Clause not just to be a positive grant of power to Congress, but also to be a limitation on the power of states to regulate interstate commerce in particularly burdensome ways.

The cause of states' rights has risen and fallen over the years. Generally, in eras of conservative Courts states have been given wide latitude to exercise their choices see Dred Scott v Sandford , for an extreme example. Recently, the Court has recognized limits on the powers of Congress under the Commerce Clause, given fresh meaning to the 10th Amendment, and expanded the doctrine of state sovereign immunity under the 11th Amendment.

Typically today, cases that pit the rights of states against the power of the federal government will be decided by a closely divided Supreme Court. The exception is often in cases applying the Supremacy Clause preemption doctrine where views on the merits of the federal law seem to influence votes as much as do any overarching views of how the preemption doctrine should be applied. During the American Revolution, the founding fathers were forced to compromise with the states to ensure ratification of the Constitution and the establishment of a united country.

In fact, the original Constitution banned slavery, but Virginia would not accept it; and Massachusetts would not ratify the document without a Bill of Rights.

The debate over which powers rightly belonged to the states and which to the Federal Government became heated again in the s and s fueled by the divisive issue of whether slavery would be allowed in the new territories forming as the nation expanded westward. The Missouri Compromise in tried to solve the problem but succeeded only temporarily. Abolitionist groups sprang up in the North, making Southerners feel that their way of life was under attack. They began to argue that slavery was not only necessary, but in fact, it was a positive good.

As the North and the South became more and more different, their goals and desires also separated. Arguments over national policy grew even fiercer. By the s and s, North and South had each evolved extreme positions that had as much to do with serving their own political interests as with the morality of slavery.

As long as there were an equal number of slave-holding states in the South as non-slave-holding states in the North, the two regions had even representation in the Senate and neither could dictate to the other.

However, each new territory that applied for statehood threatened to upset this balance of power. Southerners consistently argued for states rights and a weak federal government but it was not until the s that they raised the issue of secession.

The issue came up again during the War of A few New England Federalists who opposed the war and the administration of U. Delegations from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island met in Hartford, Connecticut, from December until January to air their complaints and even to discuss secession.

Ultimately, the United States concluded its war against Great Britain, and the Federalists met resounding defeat at the polls in The party eventually collapsed. The Tariff of placed a tax on European imports in order to protect New England industry, a policy that hurt some southern businessmen.

When, after taking office, U. Jackson was even challenged within his own administration. His independent-minded vice president, John C. Not surprisingly, he resigned his office in Jackson responded in force, asserting the power of the federal government by dispatching warships to Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

Only the Compromise Tariff of , proposed by U. The Whig Party was founded that same year in opposition to Jackson. The sectional crises of the s came in the wake of the Mexican War — The United States had won from Mexico about , square miles of land—in addition to Texas, the current states of California, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming—and now hoped to absorb it into the Union without upsetting the delicate balance of power between slave and free states.

At issue was whether and how slavery would spread to these new territories. After years of angry negotiations, the Whig and Democratic parties agreed on the Compromise of The deal admitted California into the Union as a free state, abolished the slave trade in Washington, D. Crisis was averted, but not for long. Two actions of the federal government enflamed the sectional crisis even further, angering abolitionists and sparking defensive reactions in the South.

The Fugitive Slave Act required free states to cooperate in the capture of escaped slaves within their borders. And in Dred Scott v. Sandford , the United States Supreme Court ruled, in part, that slavery could not be restricted in the territories. In the meantime, the sectional crisis contributed to a gradual political realignment. The Second Party System — , a period in which political allegiances were fairly evenly divided between the Whig and Democratic parties, was coming to an end.

Instead of identifying with their party, Americans were beginning to identify more strongly with their section. They were either Northerners or Southerners. The Whig Party dissolved as a result, not long after its candidate, Virginian Winfield Scott , was thumped in the presidential election of Indeed, the sections, at least on the surface, had developed distinctive economies and cultures.

Historians disagree on the degree to which these differences were real, but certainly many Northern cities had been transformed by the Industrial Revolution into manufacturing centers. The Southern economy, meanwhile, had become increasingly tied to slavery and its expansion. Slavery was always most important, a fact illustrated by the debate over popular sovereignty.

The right of people in a state or territory to determine for themselves whether to allow slavery was most famously championed by U. Douglas of Illinois as part of the Kansas-Nebraska Act They were unwilling to risk the possibility that popular sovereignty would limit the spread of slavery, preferring instead to rely on the power of the federal government.