New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | November 26, 2004

Jacob Sullum on the return of states' rights.

Comments

|11.26.04 @ 11:52AM|#

I keep popping up on threads like this, but I keep getting the cold shoulder. Whassa matter? I got halitosis? (I haven't been dead that long, ya know.)

sic semper tyrannis!

|11.26.04 @ 3:26PM|#

Could federalism be the answer to our nation's pressing barbecue crisis?

|11.26.04 @ 7:03PM|#

Two points:

First, while segregation was a stupid practice, and always resulted in the minority getting shortchanged, Brown v. Board was very bad law. That the 14th ammendment forbids the states to segregate is an arguable proposition at best.

Second, recall that one of the arguments offered by the State of Texas in Roe v. Wade was that the 14th ammendment's Equal Protection Clause required that states prohibit abortion -- to do otherwise would be to deny the protection of the law to fetuses. If the SCOTUS were to rule that fetuses are "persons" in the eyes of the law, it's possible that abortion would be automatically made illegal.

|11.27.04 @ 12:15AM|#

That quip about cherry picking your federalism describes Scalia and Thomas. For all their supposed support for federalism, they have not cast votes against the drug war or other "conservative" encroachments on states' rights.

|11.27.04 @ 3:07PM|#

States don't have rights. Neither does any aggregate of people. Only individuals have rights.

|11.28.04 @ 12:50PM|#

I was going to the make that point, but Phil beat me to it. When it comes to indivdual (negative?) rights, I'd very much like it if they were enumerated at the state and national level. It makes them somewhat harder to take away.