States’ Rights

A political doctrine in the United States, which maintains that the Federal State is not a sovereign state, but that its acts require ratification by the individual States forming the Union, who are thus at liberty to disregard its enactments if they consider them unconstitutional. Thus South Carolina, in 1832, “nullified” an Act of Congre relating to import duties, and the doctrine was held in 1860 to justify the sece ion of the Southern States.