Once again, Williams doesn't seem to have thought this through very well at all. When one really looks at what he's suggesting, it represents a case of saving the Constitution by violating it.
Williams cannot possibly advocate that a state can ignore all federal laws they happen to dislike. The only reasonable interpretation is that he's suggesting that states have a moral duty to oppose unconstitutional acts.
Unfortunately, that raises some substantial Constitutional difficulties. No state is empowered by the Constitution to decide what is, or is not, Constitutional. That is a power reserved to the Supreme Court, under Article III. To bypass that enumerated power contradicts the point Williams seeks to make.
Suppose Congress passes Law X, and the Supreme Court rules that Law X is Constitutional -- which, under Article III, it is empowered to do.
Based on the Supreme Court ruling, the state's nullification action is unconstitutional: According to Article VI, the state's officials and judges are explicitly bound to uphold the Constitution, including this particular issue.
Thus, even if some particular attempt at nullification is morally justified, nullification is nevertheless an act insurrection against the properly constituted government.
The proper response of the Federal Government is of course open to question, and it's probably determined on a case-by-case basis anyway.
I think the problem here is that Williams has simply misdirected his ire. If there are problems with the federal government (and there are), those problems originate not in Washington, D.C., but in the states, and from the people of those states, from whence come the Senators and Representatives who pass those unconstitutional laws.
At root, the problem is a moral one. To quote John Adams: Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Probably the best modern-day example of an attempt to nullify federal laws was George Wallace. According the linked Washington Post story: In September 1963, Wallace ordered state police to Huntsville, Mobile, Tuskegee and Birmingham to prevent public schools from opening, following a federal court order to integrate Alabama schools. Helmeted and heavily armed state police and state National Guard units kept students and faculty from entering schools. Following civil disturbances resulting in at least one death, President Kennedy again nationalized the Guard and saw the schools integrated.
Ironically, the motivation behind this particular nullification attempt is little different from what led the South to seceed prior to the Civil War.
Walt
The states, as well as the people, do not derive their powers from the Constitution. That is the whole point of the 9th and 10th Amendments. The Constitution was written to enumerate the powers of the federal government, except in those instances where "state" or "states" is specifically mentioned.
"...That is a power reserved to the Supreme Court, under Article III."
Where exactly does it say that the Supreme Court shall have sole power in deciding what is or is not constitutional? Benjamin Franklin once said, "It is every American's right, and obligation, to read and interpret the Constitution for himself." The Suprem Court is supposed to interpret law in light of the Constituton. It is not supposed to interpret the Constitution itself. If that's the case, nine people in black robes are able to rule the nation. Is that what our ancestors fought and died for?
"...nullification is nevertheless an act insurrection against the properly constituted government."
Who originally constituted said government? If memory serves, "we the people."
Wisdom of our Forefathers - I'll follow Madison's interpretation over yours.
Really now?
Nullification in the United StateS
Considering that it was done first by Virginia and Kentucky in resolutions written by Jefferson and Madison, architects of the very same 'properly constituted government', and followed less than 30 years later by Calhoun over tariffs, whose actions BTW lead to lower tariffs but not low enough considering the War of NA. Not to mention those fun loving wacky Federalists up north. As many times as the north threatened secession between 1800-1820, I'm suprised this nation lasted until 1860.
Nullification is the only one legal step down the road to secession. And the men who founded this nation, wrote the Constitution itself, and were involved in the political arena during the first 20-30 years of the nation saw it, accepted it, and when needed used nullification to keep the federal government in check
Based on the Supreme Court ruling, the state's nullification action is unconstitutional: According to Article VI, the state's officials and judges are explicitly bound to uphold the Constitution, including this particular issue.
You may find the following of interest:
On the 29th of May, 1787, the [constitutional] convention was organized, and Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, offered sundry resolutions resuming the word national, though it had been rejected by all the states, and proposing "that a national legislature shall have the right to legislate in all cases in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation, and to negative all laws passed by the several states, contravening, in the opinion of the national legislature, the articles of the union, or any treaty under the union." The resolutions also proposed "a national executive and a national judiciary; that the executive and a convenient number of the national judiciary ought to compose a council of revision, with authority to examine every act of the national legislature, before it shall operate, and every act of a particular legislature, before a negative thereon shall be final; and that the dissent of the said council shall amount to a rejection, unless the act of the national legislature be again passed, or that of a particular legislature be again negatived by ____ of the members of each branch."
It is worthy of particular observation, that in this project, the constructive supremacy [i.e., the power to define the meaning of the Constitution and the limits of its own powers] now claimed for the federal government "over the articles of the union," was proposed to be given to a national government; because the actual consideration of this identical power, and its absence from the constitution as it was finally adopted, seems to be irresistible evidence that it does not exist.
John Taylor, New Views of the Constitution of the United States, 1823 (emphasis in the original)
Mr. Taylor goes on at some length, but his analysis is irrefutable. You may also wish to refer to Thomas Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, and James Madison’s Report on the Virginia Resolutions of 1800. In the latter, the primary ‘author of the Constitution’ states that the federal courts were not given the final say regarding the meaning of the Constitution, no matter what Mr. Justice Marshall may have believed. An antiquated point of view? Consider Mr. Justice Scalia’s comments at The Catholic University of America in 1996:
“The Constitution of the United States nowhere says that the Supreme Court shall be the last word on what the Constitution means. Or that the Supreme Court shall have the authority to disregard statutes enacted by the congress of the United States on the ground that in its view they do not comport with the Constitution. It doesn't say that anywhere. We made it up.”
Your point of view appears to be revisionist in nature...