Obviously, if a power that's forbidden to the federal government is involved or if the federal government oversteps its authority, federal law isn't supreme in that area. But if a state simply decides that federal law doesn't apply to it, the state is in violation of the Constitution.
I don't argue that the federal government is sovereign or that states may not be "sovereign" in certain areas, simply that a state that agreed to the Constitution would have a hard time logically asserting an absolute sovereignty of the sort that lentulus claims for the states.
Some have spoken of a "dual sovereignty" under our system. That's okay with me, but it's a far cry from what lentulus is arguing.
Utter tripe. The federal law must be PURSUANT to the Constitution. Otherwise, the power not being prohibited remains with the state.
I don't argue that the federal government is sovereign or that states may not be "sovereign" in certain areas, simply that a state that agreed to the Constitution would have a hard time logically asserting an absolute sovereignty of the sort that lentulus claims for the states.
John Marshall stated that a delegated authority may be recalled, the states are the contracting parties, not the federal government, and it's a union of states not a fixed number, nowhere does it state that a party may not leave. New York cannot craft a single law that Georgia must abide by and vice versa. The federal government cannot craft a federal law that Georgia must obey, unless that law is pursuant to a clause in the Constitution, and even then only if Georgia agrees to abide by it. Georgia refused to agree with a Supreme Court decision, and out of that we have the 11th Amendment.
The lunatic John McCain is warning of illegal immigrants revolting if they fail to get their way, what McCain had better worry about is US revolting - it's pathetic that illegals are treated better than my family who have been here for over 300 years (indefinite counting Native ancestors).
The sovereignty of the States isn't "absolute", which implies "absolved" -- obviously, there are contractual obligations which individuals must obey (remember, the federal Constitution operates, as Hamilton and Madison were at pains to point out, on individuals, the chief remedy for the defects of the Articles of Confederation). Likewise, the States have agreed to refrain from certain activities, such as emitting money or drawing treaties either with one another or with foreign states.
So to say, that the States and the individuals composing the People are obliged by the Constitution, is not to say that they have changed their condition or their qualities in any respect, and that they are now no longer what they were, but only departments and subjects, vassals, of a created greater entity now exalted above them all. Rather, the People are still the undoubted Absolute Master of the States both singularly and in Union, and of the Constitution, and of the Union and Government that the Constitution created. The whole shooting match, in other words.
What I do claim for the People is all the powers of an absolute monarch, all of the rights, and all of the prerogatives, perquisites, and precedence. That includes all the powers delegated to the federal government -- just because I move a $20 bill from my right pocket to my left, doesn't mean I don't own it any more and can't spend it as I please. In like manner, the People of a State can resume their powers and go their own way at any time. The advisability of doing so is one thing, and completely political, but the ability of doing so is quite another, and in no doubt cast by the terms of the Constitution, which is the People's creature just as much as their individual States.