What do you know about States' rights? Did you know ALEC has proposed a resolution in support of States' rights? Where does the concept come from? What does it mean exactly?
"States' rights" is shorthand for the provisions of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.Those who advocate States' rights would actually undo the U.S. Constitution and return us to governance under the Articles of Confederation. If you're like me, that's too much history to remember all at once.
Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government was responsible for treaties and defense but had no power to enforce state compliance. The framers of the U.S. Constitution sought to form a stronger federal government, but opponents argued that the new constitution gave too much power to the federal government. After much debate the States' rights advocates lost this battle and the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the U.S. Constitution in 1789.
The take-away from the previous paragraph is that the opponents to the U.S. Constitution lost their battle for State sovereignty over 200 years ago! The fact that they lost, however, did not mean the war was over and our federal form of government has been repeatedly challenged. The first attack was in 1861 when southern States seceded from the union over the issue of slavery, and it took a civil war to restore our federal government. In 1865, the southern States attempted to usurp federalism by electing representatives to obstruct post Civil War reconstruction (and this wasn't rectified until the Civil Rights Act of 1964). More recently (1994) the "Contract With America" tried to inflate the power of the States by shrinking the federal government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" (quoting Grover Norquist).
Now ALEC has proposed a resolution reaffirming rewriting the Tenth Amendment in an attempt to return us to the good-old-days under the Articles of Confederation. For an analysis of that resolution, follow me below the fleur-de-Kos.
