President Obama has finally given up on getting the Republican minority to allow an “upper-down” vote on his nominee for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and put Richard Cordray on the job via recess appointment.

Good. As Mike Konczal argues here, the Senate Republicans were effectively practicing nullification. They don’t like the Bureau and the controls it attempts to put in place, even though the legislation creating it passed both Houses of Congress and was signed by the President. Rather than attempting to modify it by the usual practice of writing new legislation, sending it to committees, debating the changes and passing them, the Republicans are attempting to keep the original legislation from taking effect. That’s nullification, and it’s repeatedly been found to be unconstitutional by federal courts. One of the times it was tried it resulted in the American Civil War.