Waters of Impenetrable Aura  

 

This dropped off Venril Sathir on Sat, Aug 25th on the E'ci server.

States' Rights, the actual or claimed rights of component units of a federal union in relation to their central, or federal, government. States' rights concern the distribution of sovereign powers within a nation. Hence the states' rights issue does not pertain to nations having a unitary system of government, where sovereignty is undivided.

The role and rights of member "states" vary widely among the federal systems of the world, such as those of Australia, Brazil, Switzerland, and the United States. There has also been variation within the same country in different periods. In the United States, states' rights theories have provided political and constitutional issues since the establishment of the republic. Although the Civil War invalidated the secessionist view of states' rights, it left the constitutional position of the states in the American union open to further debate.

U.S. Constitutional Provisions

The problem of states' rights and powers affected the framing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. That document was put into effect in 1788 with an understanding that amendments would be added to limit the new central government with respect to states and individuals. This promise was fulfilled with the adoption of the first ten amendments, or Bill of Rights, in 1791. The last of these lays down a large base for states' rights, stipulating that 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." The tenth Amendment reflects Thomas Jefferson's insistence on limited powers for the central government, while the "elastic" last clause of Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution corresponds to the position of Alexander Hamilton, who sought justification for broad national powers.

Nullification and Secession

Jefferson and James Madison, writing the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions in protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, explained the Constitution as a compact among the states and claimed that the acts in question were contrary to the compact and thus void. Without calling for outright nullification or secession, they urged lawful steps to remedy the unconstitutional measure. The Virginia statement said that the states had the right and duty "to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil." When the Jeffersonian Democrats took over the national government, the New England Federalists used similar states' rights arguments against the War of 1812 and federal commercial politics.

Maryland used the states' rights argument in seeking to tax the Baltimore branch of the U.S. Bank and to deny the constitutionality of its congressional charter. But in McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall upheld the charter and denied Maryland power to tax an institution of the national government. (See McCulloch v. Maryland.) South Carolina went further with states' rights in the nullification controversy over the tariff of 1832. But Pres. Andrew Jackson insisted on enforcement, and nullification came to naught, although Congress did adopt a compromise tariff.

Two theoretical exponents of states' rights, who stand out as prophets of secession, are John Taylor (17531824) of Virginia and John Calhoun (17821850) of South Carolina. Taylor, an agrarian philosopher, opposed governmental centralization as partial to financial interests. Supporting the compact constitutional theory, he demanded restriction of central authority and the right of intervention by states to prevent regional discrimination in national policy. His ideas are best developed in An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (1814) and Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated (1820).

Calhoun turned to states' rights first on issues relating to the tariff and then in defense of slavery. Asserting the states' compact theory, he reasoned that the states possessed indivisible sovereignty and had created the central government as their agent. Seeking minority protection through a concurrent majority, he argued that states affected have a power to veto central policy detrimental to their interest. His views are expressed in the posthumous publications Disquisition on Government and Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States.

PostCivil War Issues

The American Civil War marked a turning point toward governmental centralization, with the Southern Confederacy losing its battle for slavery and states' rights. Previously, most changes in the U.S. Constitution had restricted national powers or safeguarded states' rights. The subsequent amendments, however, have tended to limit the states or expand national authority. The commerce clause and the war provisions of the Constitution also have furnished grounds for national action in matters once left to the states. Articulate minorities and economic interests, according to circumstances, have battled on both sides of the dividing line between states' rights and national power. The "due process" and "equal protection" clauses of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, have been invoked by corporate, racial, and other groups against distasteful state action, whereas states' rights have sometimes been invoked as a defense mechanism against unwanted change. At the same time, the U.S. federal and state governments have cooperated effectively in programs such as the development and protection of natural resources and improvements in education and welfare.

Indeed, some critics have claimed that by the last decades of the 20th century the relationship between the two levels of government was too close, with states increasingly doing the federal government's bidding with respect to controversial issues of public policy. The Supreme Court in the 1990s ruled on an increased number of states' rights cases in this vein, holding in most instances that states should be permitted more leeway in rejecting programs than they have had in the past.