Old legal doctrine gets renewed attention in attorney general race
Dirk Perrefort, Staff Writer
Published: 08:18 p.m., Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Martha Dean, Republican candidate for attorney general meets with The News-Times editorial board Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010. Photo: Carol Kaliff / The News-Times
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GOP attorney general candidate Martha Dean vows to `defend the Constitution'
DANBURY -- Perhaps no issue in the attorney general race has received more attention than nullification -- a concept raised by GOP candidate Martha Dean that allows states to ignore federal law.
Dean, 51, said nullification is a legal doctrine that goes back to the founding fathers, and is a tool in the toolbox that could be used to rein in federal power.
Her opponent, Democrat George Jepsen, 55, said it's an antiquated idea discounted long ago that's only recently been brought back into the public spotlight by fringe groups on the far right.
An extreme form of nullifcation, according to Jepsen, is secession -- when states decide, or threaten, to leave the union. It's an idea Dean said she doesn't support, but she said it is allowed under the U.S. Constitution.
According to Dean, an Avon resident, nullification has been used throughout history and was brought up as recently as the start up of the Iraq War, when Vermont threatened nullifcation over the use of national guard troops on foreign soil.
As a result, state officials "raised some very good issues that needed to be addressed," Dean said.
"It's one of several tools that could be used to reign in the federal government," she said Wednesday during a phone interview with The News-Times.
"It's a last resort to keep the federal government within its constitutional bounds."
It's a legal doctrine, she said, that northern states used to stop the enforcement of the fugitive slave law, an act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1850 that required the return of run away slaves to their owners.
The state of California is considering a form of nullification, Dean said, in Proposition 19 -- a referendum included in next month's election that would legalize some uses of marijuana. Prop 19, "would ignore the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that it's an interstate commerce issue," Dean said.
Jepsen, a Ridgefield resident, said a U.S. Supreme Court rejected the doctrine of nullification in its 1958 decision of Cooper v. Aaron -- a case that involved schools officials in Little Rock, Ark. who fought against school desegregation.
"Nullification means that instead of having one final source on how the U.S. Constitution is interpreted, the U.S. Supreme Court, we would have 50 different versions of what it means," Jepsen said. "It would bring America down a road where it would cease to be united. The stakes are enormous. The most extreme version of nullification is secession."
While Jepsen said secession is a doctrine that was "settled in the Civil War," Dean said the states have that right.
"Do the state's have the legal right?" Dean said. "Absolutely. Should they use it? Absolutely not."
Contact Dirk Perrefort
at dperrefort@newstimes.com
or at 203-731-3358.
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