A US political doctrine that upholds the rights of individual states against the power of the federal government. The framers of the Constitution of the USA produced a federal system in which the delineation of power between the federal government and the states was open to interpretation, and from the very beginning divergent views on this issue have influenced US politics. In the early years of the USA Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Party saw the Constitution as a sanction for strong central (federal) government, while Jefferson and his followers believed that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government should be reserved to the states. The doctrine of states’ rights lay behind the Nullification Crisis of 1828–33 and provided the constitutional basis of the Southern case in the dispute leading up to the American Civil War. In recent years the doctrine has been central to controversies over civil rights and welfare expenditure.