Overview of Judicial Supremacy vs State Interposition Resource: Reynolds, David. Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Read and briefly summarize the short excerpts from Story’s “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833)” arguing for judicial supremacy and Upshur’s “A Brief Enquiry into the Nature and Character of our Federal Government” arguing for state sovereignty in questions of constitutionality. What were the constitutional bases for judicial supremacy and state interposition/nullification? Imagine yourself as an American citizen in the Jacksonian Era reading these definitive arguments for the two camps of constitutional interpretation—-which argument would you find most convincing? Now, looking back with a 21st-century perspective, is your answer the same?

Overview of Judicial Supremacy vs State Interposition Resource: Reynolds, David. Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Read and briefly summarize the short excerpts from Story’s “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833)” arguing for judicial supremacy and Upshur’s “A Brief Enquiry into the Nature and Character of our Federal Government” arguing for state sovereignty in questions of constitutionality. What were the constitutional bases for judicial supremacy and state interposition/nullification? Imagine yourself as an American citizen in the Jacksonian Era reading these definitive arguments for the two camps of constitutional interpretation—-which argument would you find most convincing? Now, looking back with a 21st-century perspective, is your answer the same?