Alien and Sedition Acts
The Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 added the assertion that when a federal law is unconstitutional, the remedy is "nullification" of the law by "the several states". The Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 did not assert that Kentucky would unilaterally refuse to enforce, or prevent enforcement of, the Alien and Sedition Acts. Rather, these resolutions declared that Kentucky "will bow to the laws of the Union" but would continue "to oppose in a constitutional manner" the Alien and Sedition Acts. The resolutions stated that Kentucky was entering its "solemn protest" against those Acts. The author of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 is not known with certainty.