From the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. The authors are Thomas Jefferson and James Madison:
Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary masses of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party; that this government, created by this compact, was not made the exclusive or final judge to the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers, but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge for itself...each party has equal right to judge for itself. |
