If any American today were to listen to the nationalists in charge of either the political class or American education at large, they would get the sense that it is settled science that the American Union is comprised of one people held together by a national government with uncontested sovereignty over all matters foreign and domestic. Certainly, States and local governments can make laws, but those laws are subject to review by the national judiciary and can be declared invalid at any time if a national judge rules that the law in question violates the prevailing national opinion in regard to any matter, political, social, or economic. Not even national laws crafted by the national legislature can stop the black robed federal adjudicators.
It has not always been this way. There are hundreds of dusty tomes buried deep in both research and public libraries that expose this position as a fraud, at least in regard to the federal American system as designed by the founding generation. And not all lawyers, legal scholars, or judges used to be corrupted by nationalist propaganda. There were hearty souls who effectively refuted the nationalist lie made popular by Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, Joseph Story, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln.
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