Abstract
Autore:
Bottaro Giuseppe
Titolo:
"La teoria degli States´ Rights nelle risoluzioni della Virginia"
In 1798 the still young republic of the United States had to deal with a difficult political and institutional crisis. Federalists and Republicans construed the Federal Constitution in two different and incompatible ways. The federalist party was pressing to entrust the central government with major powers while the jeffersonians were trying to safeguard, above all, self-government and the power of the federate states. The contrast between Hamilton´s policy of consolidation and the theory of States´ Rights bursted when the Congress issued The Allien and Sedition Acts. In replay to these laws the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were adopted to protest against the "usurpation" of the Federal Government and to defend the civil liberties and the rights of the opposition´s parties. After all the theory of States´ Rights declared, in the words of the jeffersonians, that: "Congress is the creature of the states and of the people; but neither the states nor the peoples are the creatures of Congress". Peoples will was better expressed through organized bodies dependent on that will, that is the states, which should also have the power to declare a federal law uncostitutional. But according to Hamilton and Adams this theory was in contrast with the Constitution of the 1787 and could destroy the Federal Union. The political and doctrinal debate, derived on this occasion, represents, certainly, one of the most important moments of the civil history of the United States.
