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The Report of 1800 was a resolution drafted by James Madison arguing for the sovereignty of the individual states under the United States Constitution and against the Alien and Sedition Acts.〔The Report is also known as the ''Virginia Report of 1800'', the ''Report of 1799'', ''Madison's Report'' or the ''Report on the Alien and Sedition Acts''.〕 Adopted by the Virginia General Assembly in January 1800, the Report amends arguments from the 1798 Virginia Resolutions and attempts to resolve contemporary criticisms against the Resolutions. The Report was the last important explication of the Constitution produced before the 1817 Bonus Bill veto message by Madison, who has come to be regarded as the "Father of the Constitution."〔See, e.g., Brant's subtitle "Father of the Constitution."〕 The arguments made in the Resolutions and the Report were later used frequently during the nullification crisis of 1832, when South Carolina declared federal tariffs to be unconstitutional and void within the state. Madison rejected the concept of nullification and the notion that his arguments supported such a practice. Whether Madison's theory of Republicanism really supported the nullification movement, and more broadly whether the ideas he expressed between 1798 and 1800 are consistent with his work before and after this period, are the main questions surrounding the Report in the modern literature. ==Background== Madison, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, was elected to the Democratic-Republican-dominated Virginia General Assembly from Orange County in 1799. A major item on his agenda was the defense of the General Assembly's 1798 Virginia Resolutions, of which Madison had been the draftsman.〔Madison initially decided to run for office mainly to counteract the strength of prominent Federalist Patrick Henry, who was set to be elected to the House. However, Henry died over the summer, leaving the Democratic-Republicans free to pursue their plans with no substantial opposition. Madison, 303.〕 The Resolutions, usually discussed together with Thomas Jefferson's contemporaneous Kentucky Resolutions, were a response to various perceived outrages perpetrated by the Federalist-dominated national government. The most significant of these were the Alien and Sedition Acts, four laws that allowed the President to deport aliens at will, required a longer period of residence before aliens could become citizens, and made it a crime to publish malicious or defamatory material against the government or its officials. Democratic-Republicans were outraged by the legislation, and Madison and Jefferson drafted the highly critical Resolutions adopted in response by the Virginia and Kentucky state legislatures. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions had in the year since publication received highly critical replies from state legislatures. Seven states formally responded to Virginia and Kentucky by rejecting the Resolutions〔The seven states that transmitted formal rejections were Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont. See 〕 and three other states passed resolutions expressing disapproval,〔Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey passed resolutions that disapproved the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, but these states did not transmit formal responses to Kentucky and Virginia. 〕 with the other four states taking no action. No other state endorsed the Resolutions. The reason for the criticism was that the General Assembly, led in the effort by state-sovereignty advocate John Taylor of Caroline, had put a state-sovereignty spin on the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 despite Madison's hopes. These replies contended that the Supreme Court of the United States had the ultimate responsibility for deciding whether federal laws were constitutional, and that the Alien and Sedition Acts were constitutional and necessary.〔Madison, 303. At least six states responded to the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions by stating that the power to declare a law unconstitutional rested in the federal judiciary, not the states. For example, Vermont's resolution stated: "It belongs not to state legislatures to decide on the constitutionality of laws made by the general government; this power being exclusively vested in the judiciary courts of the Union." . The other states taking the position that the constitutionality of federal laws is a question for the federal courts, not the states, were New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. The Governor of Delaware also took this position. 〕 The Federalists accused the Democratic-Republicans of seeking disunion, even contemplating violence.〔Koch and Ammon, 163.〕 At the time, some leading Virginia Democratic-Republican figures such as Rep. William Branch Giles (in public) and Taylor (in private) actually were contemplating disunion, and the Virginia General Assembly chose this juncture for finally constructing a new state armory in Richmond, so there was some truth to the charge. Jefferson, the leader of the Democratic-Republican Party and then–Vice President, wrote to Madison in August 1799 outlining a campaign to strengthen public support for the principles expressed in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 (commonly referred to as "the principles of '98"): In response to this letter, Madison visited Jefferson at Monticello during the first week of September.〔Madison, 304.〕 Their discussion was important in that it persuaded Jefferson to depart from his radical stance on dissociation from the Union, which is expressed at the end of the excerpt above. At the very least, Virginia or Kentucky taking such a stance publicly would have justified the Federalist attacks against the secessionist tendencies of the Democratic-Republicans. Madison won over Jefferson, who shortly thereafter wrote to Wilson Cary Nicholas that: "From [this position] I retreat readily, not only in deference to [Madison's] judgment but because as we should never think of separation but for repeated and enormous violations, so these, when they occur, will be cause enough of themselves."〔Letter from Jefferson to W.C. Nicholas of September 5, 1799, quoted in Brant, 467.〕 Adrienne Koch and Harry Ammon, examining Jefferson's later writing, conclude that Madison had a significant role "in softening Jefferson's more extreme views."〔Koch and Ammon, 167.〕 Jefferson hoped for further involvement with the production of the Report and planned to visit Madison at Montpelier on his way to Philadelphia, the national capital, for the winter session of the United States Congress. However, James Monroe, who would become Governor of Virginia before the end of the year, visited Jefferson at Monticello and cautioned him against meeting with Madison, since another meeting between two of the most important Democratic-Republican leaders would provoke significant public comment.〔Koch and Ammon, 169–170.〕 The task of writing the Virginia Report was left solely to Madison. Jefferson underlined the importance of this work in a November 26 letter to Madison in which he identified "protestations against violations of the true principles of our constitution" as one of the four primary elements of the Democratic-Republican Party plan.〔Letter from Jefferson to Madison of November 26, 1799, quoted in Koch and Ammon, 170.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Report of 1800」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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