Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were declarations passed by the Kentucky and Virginia state legislatures. They protested against the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress in 1798. The resolutions were the first to claim that the states had the right to decide whether a law of Congress was unconstitutional. James Madison drafted the Virginia Resolutions, which were adopted in 1798. There were two sets of Kentucky Resolutions, one prepared by Thomas Jefferson and passed in 1798, and the other adopted in 1799.
Both states declared that the Alien and Sedition Acts violated the Constitution by giving the president judicial power, denying aliens the right to jury trial, and limiting freedom of speech and the press. Copies of the resolutions were sent to other states, producing a largely unfavorable response. Most Northern states said that the federal courts alone could declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. The Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 answered the replies. Kentucky asserted that a state could nullify any act of Congress it believed to be unconstitutional.
