Interposition

Dictionary: In·ter·po·si·tion

[L. interpositio a putting between, insertion, fr. interponere, interpositum: cf. F. interposition. See Interpone, Position.]

1. The act of interposing, or the state of being interposed; a being, placing, or coming between; mediation.

2. The thing interposed.

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US Supreme Court: Interposition

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Implied that the states have a right to interpose their authority to protect their citizens from the unconstitutional measures of the federal government. In 1798 Virginia proposed interposition to resist the Sedition Act. In the 1830s South Carolina asserted its rights to nullify a federal tariff but backed down when threatened with military force by President Andrew Jackson. Later Senator John C. Calhoun argued for interposition to prevent the delivery of mail in the South containing abolitionist propaganda.

In the 1850s many Northerners urged interposition, in the form of personal liberty laws and court actions, to prevent enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (see Fugitive Slaves). In 1854 the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the 1850 law unconstitutional and released the abolitionist Sherman Booth from federal custody. In overturning this decision, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared, in *Ableman v. Booth (1859), that such “propositions are new in the jurisprudence of the United States” and that the Supreme Court had the final authority to interpret the meaning of the Constitution (p. 514). Secession was the most dramatic form of interposition, and it was met with an equally dramatic and forceful response by President Abraham Lincoln.

After Brown v. Board of Education (1954), some southern states fought school desegregation with “massive resistance,” a form of interposition. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), which involved the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, the federal courts cited Ableman v. Booth to reaffirm the principle that the Supreme Court had final authority to interpret the meaning of the Constitution. Interposition is now a relic of constitutional theory that died in the Civil War but was briefly and futilely resurrected in the 1950s and 1960s by diehard segregationists.

— Paul Finkelman

WordNet: interposition

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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has 2 meanings:

Meaning #1: the action of interjecting or interposing an action or remark that interrupts
Synonyms: interjection, interpolation, interpellation

Meaning #2: the act of interposing one thing between or among others

Wikipedia: Interposition

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Look up interposition in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Interposition, in the context of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, refers to an asserted right of U.S. states to protect their individual interests from federal violation or any abridgement of states' rights deemed by those states to be dangerous or unconstitutional. In the words of the Virginia Resolution of 1798,

That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.

By this statement, Madison asserts that state bodies are "duty bound to interpose" or stand between federal encroachment on the rights of a sovereign state. The procedural legal details of how this interposition is enacted is not explicit. The Virginia Resolution thus provides what is sometimes considered to be the more tempered Madisonian view to Jefferson's Kentucky Resolution that calls for nullification of federal laws. It is often used in conjunction with nullification, which is said by its advocates to give states the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal law which that the state has deemed unconstitutional.

Interposition is now often claimed to be a discredited doctrine with no legal basis, based on the United States Constitution's Supremacy Clause^[1]. This is said by advocates like Thomas Woods to raise the question of constitutionality: it is because the Constitution is the supreme law of the land that states are said to be within their rights to nullify or interpose federal laws that are deemed unconstitutional. In that case, the question over what authority the individual states have to interpret the Constitution may be more relevant to the discussion (see States' Rights).

Interposition made a brief return in the 1950s after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. States such as Virginia and Florida passed Interposition Resolutions.

Interposition and nullification were referenced by Dr Martin Luther King in his famous 28 August 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D. C.:

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.^[2]

References

^ Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the United States Constitution
^ Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk

External links

Copy and transcript of Florida's Interposition Resolution in 1957; made available for public use by the State Archives of Florida

		Dictionary. Webster 1913 Dictionary edited by Patrick J. Cassidy Read more
		US Supreme Court. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. Copyright © 1992, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Interposition". Read more
		Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more

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Interposition

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