nullification

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nullification In US history, the idea that a state may choose not to enforce a law passed by the federal government. First advanced in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798), it influenced Southern thinking on states' rights before the Civil War. It was tested in 1832, when the South Carolina legislature nullified the Tariff Law of 1828, declaring it unconstitutional. The crisis was defused when South Carolina accepted a compromise Tariff Act (1833).

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