>...invoking the 10th Amendment, Jefferson argued the Alien and Sedition Acts were logically unconstitutional.

>...invoking the 10th Amendment, Jefferson argued the Alien and Sedition Acts were logically unconstitutional. The Sedition Act clearly infringed the 1st Amendment. The Alien Act was further unconstitutional, because, he observed, the Constitution had no provision establishing the regulation of immigration as an enumerated power (indeed until the Immigration Act of 1890, when the immigration system in the US was nationalized, there were no Federal immigration laws and this power rested exclusively with the states). He also argued that the Federal government was by no means the ultimate arbiter of the law or the Constitution and states could nullify a tyrannous or unconstitutional law.

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >write fake bulslhit to get votes from new citizens and build your party around it
    sounds familiar

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Also partially true; the Chinese Exclusion Act predated the 1890 immigration act by nearly a decade. However, Jefferson was not necessarily wrong about the lack of any specific provision allowing national level regulation of immigration.

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >arresting seditionists is le bad
    >controlling your borders is le bad
    Why are liberals like this?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >if you don't think it should be federal you think it's bad
      Why are [out group] like this?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      You don't know what liberalism is, and Jefferson was anti-liberal.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >You don't know what liberalism is
        Then what is it?
        >and Jefferson was anti-liberal.
        How so?

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    wasn't it established that the Supreme Court not the states had the power to nullify laws?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The Constitution didn't actually clarify; John Marshall simply conferred that power on himself.

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >indeed until the Immigration Act of 1890, when the immigration system in the US was nationalized

    It's significant that the Republican Party is generally seen as historically the small business/limited government party but the infamous 51st Congress wouldn't have been out of place in the FDR years.

    >nationalized immigration system
    >drunken spending spree which crashed the economy
    >beginning of national park system, first anti-monopoly measure, and first Federal income tax (this soon invalidated by the Supreme Court)

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      there was a growing move towards the belief in a planned top-down economy in that time and imperial Germany was a large reason for it, there were a lot of admirers of Bismarck's enlightened despotism.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      terrible midwit take

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      that was not that bad compared to what happened under FDR. at least they accepted Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co and didn't get so butthurt that they decided to wipe the entire Supreme Court and replace it with lackey judges.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      That stuff matters less than the Sherman Silver Purchase Act which immediately crashed the economy.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The Sherman Antitrust Act was an extension of the Interstate Commerce Act of a few years earlier. This was still relatively consistent with the original purpose of the commerce clause in establishing a free trade zone between the states (that being monopolies were presumed to obstruct free trade).

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Adair vs United States (1908). The Supreme Court overturned an 1898 act of Congress forbidding any employer which operated over state lines to fire workers on account of union membership as infringing on the 5th Amendment and also an inappropriate use of the commerce clause. Justices McKenna and Holmes dissented.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Accurate. I'm pretty sure the operating word is "commerce" as in economic activities ie the buying and selling of goods and this particular law did not fall under such.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            yes. there have always been that certain segment of corrupt Congressmen who believe however that the commerce clause means they can regulate anything ever that happens to move over state lines even non-economic activities.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            I feel that came about as a result of the progressive era because even John Marshall ridiculed the idea that the commerce clause gave Congress unlimited power to regulate everything ever.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Most of these laws were actually pretty toothless. For example the original Sherman Antitrust Act barely did anything.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The progressive movement had sway in both parties, but to compare Republican progressivism to the progressivism of the likes of Wilson and the New Dealers (who actually created the American administrative state as it exists today) is moronic.

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    creating laws based on spurious readings of the Constitution is always a bad idea because you set yourself up for court challenges. thus the 1894 income tax act. it got chucked by the Supreme Court so next time around they made sure to bolt it to the Constitution via an amendment.

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