USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -John C. Calhoun contended in the South Carolina Exposition and Protest of 1828 that the states were sovereign and had the right to rule. Since the Constitution was a compact formed by the states, the states could decide on the legality and constitutionality of federal laws.

Detailed explanation-2: -A staunch defender of the institution of slavery, and a slave-owner himself, Calhoun was the Senate’s most prominent states’ rights advocate, and his doctrine of nullification professed that individual states had a right to reject federal policies that they deemed unconstitutional.

Detailed explanation-3: -In response to the Tariff of 1828, vice president John C. Calhoun asserted that states had the right to nullify federal laws.

Detailed explanation-4: -First, Kentucky’s attempt to nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798; second, South Carolina’s attempt to nullify two federal tariff laws in 1832; and third, Arkansas’s attempt to nullify Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in 1957.

Detailed explanation-5: -What was John C. Calhoun’s nullification theory as set forth in “The South Carolina Exposition"? His theory was that the US Constitution was based on a compact among the sovereign states and so each of the 13 sovereign states had the right to nullify or reject a federal law that it considered unconstitutional.