{"id":1615,"date":"2012-04-26T21:31:09","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T01:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/hlpr\/?p=1615"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:23:40","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:23:40","slug":"states-rights-to-do-what-exactly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/04\/26\/states-rights-to-do-what-exactly\/","title":{"rendered":"States\u2019 Rights . . . to Do What, Exactly?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By\u00a0Mark Wilson<\/p>\n<p><\/em>So we\u2019ve got a federal health care law, the federal government arguing for exclusive federal authority in immigration, and statutes that allow for federal prosecution of basically any crime if that crime involved using the mail or transmitting anything over a wire.<\/p>\n<p>Whither federalism?<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n2012 is a very different place from 1789, where there were no phones, no lights, no motor cars, not a single luxury! Of necessity, a person had the most interaction with his or her local government, and perhaps the state government. But the national government? Unless you lived on the mid-Atlantic coast, Washington, D.C. was a far-off place.<\/p>\n<p>Washington, D.C. \u2014 and our federal representatives \u2014 are now a phone call away. Technology has made most commerce interstate, allowing Congress to insert itself into places that the authors of the Constitution never contemplated. One of the state-respondents\u2019 big arguments in the issue of the Affordable Care Act was that it would violate the principle of federalism. Earlier this week, the conservative justices seemed amenable to the idea that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20120509065748\/http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaelbobelian\/2012\/04\/25\/supreme-courts-look-at-arizonas-immigration-law-could-dramatically-redefine-the-federal-state-balance\/\">preemption of Arizona\u2019s immigration law might violate state sovereignty<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In practice, however, \u201cstate sovereignty\u201d is not so much a substantive doctrine as it is a refuge. The Affordable Care Act might violate state sovereignty, but what does that mean? If Congress wants to come up with a national solution to a national problem, should it be impeded by \u201cstates\u2019 rights\u201d? States\u2019 rights\u00a0<em>to what<\/em>? Merely to have sovereignty?<\/p>\n<p>Federalism, states\u2019 rights, state sovereignty: these words carried more weight two hundred years ago, when, truly, each State was a separate fiefdom. But two hundred years of being a Union of States, coupled with technological advances that make interstate interaction orders of magnitude easier than in the past, issues that formerly were local issues can become national issues.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s also a question about which level of government is better for securing rights and liberties. Before the Civil War, we all thought that the state governments were the bastions of freedom protecting us from the tyranny of the general government back in Washington. Then\u00a0<em>Dred Scott<\/em>\u00a0happened, the Civil War happened, and we discovered that state governments could be oppressive and tyrannical, too.<\/p>\n<p>Running for president in the 1960s,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20120509065748\/http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Southern_strategy\">Richard Nixon used \u201cstates\u2019 rights\u201d as a euphemism<\/a>\u00a0for \u201cstates should be able to discriminate based on race if they want to.\u201d Even though Chief Justice Roberts explicitly excluded the notion of racial profiling at the beginning of the Arizona immigration law oral arguments, the spectre of profiling remained throughout the discussion. It is undeniable Arizona is invoking \u201cstates\u2019 rights\u201d so that it can\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20120509065748\/http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/supreme_court_dispatches\/2012\/04\/the_supreme_court_appears_ready_to_uphold_parts_of_arizona_s_controversial_immigration_law_.html\">profile whomever it wants<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So even though far more issues today are of national scope than they were in 1789, and even though Congress is in a position to address those issues, they shouldn\u2019t be able to because of a 200-year-old, formalistic doctrine that speaks not to actual resolution of problems but to \u201cliberty\u201d as nothing more than an empty catchphrase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0Mark Wilson So we\u2019ve got a federal health care law, the federal government arguing for exclusive federal authority in immigration, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-q3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}