States' Rights Wronged

Campus Report ^ | February 6, 2009 | Heather Latham

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States’ Rights Wronged

by: Heather Latham, February 06, 2009

During the infancy of the United States of America, one of the main complaints of federalism is that it would take away the power of the states. Thence the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution was born, with the intent to protect those rights. But, that was over two hundred years ago—now, according to some scholars, to preserve federalism, we must take away some of that power—at any cost to those founding principles.

At a recent American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), Larry E. Ribstein discussed his book The Law Market, which he coauthored with Erin A. O’Hara. Ribstein argues that federalism, with regards to interstate commerce, is great, but it has “discontents” which he hints may kill it.

Ribstein lists his “joys of federalism” as “competition among the states, a variety of state views, [and] the opportunity to experiment without knowing exactly where you’re going to get from the experiment—which is a good thing because we live in an uncertain world, and we don’t know what the answers are.” The “discontents” he lists all boil down to one problem: “We’re left with a situation where, to some extent, the states inevitably are going to impose their…separate regulation[s]…and what that means, almost inevitably, is that regulatory costs are going to get imposed outside the state while instate interest groups realize all of the regulatory benefits.”

The solution Ribstein gives to quiet this “discontent” is a bit more complicated than the problem, and it is a bit more controversial...

[M. Dodge Thomas]

Well, there really *are* advantages to regularizing state regulations, some of which are quite attractive to many conservatives. One example that comes to mind is the attempt regularize state firearms regulation so that it is practical to (for example) transport a firearm between Indiana and Iowa across Illinois - which has more restrictive firearms regulation than either of its neighboring states.

[PhilCollins]

We wouldn’t have that problem the you mentioned if all states obeyed the 2nd Amendment and repealed their gun laws.

My congressman is Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican who is pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage, pro-illegal alien, pro-spending increases, and anti-Iraq surge. He said that he opposes congressional earmarks, but he ensured that the federal government spent money, in our district, for Headstart, commuter trains, and local police depts. I emailed him and reminded him about the 10th Amendment. I said, “Please write to me and tell which articles, of the Constitution, mention education, trains, and police departments, or tell why you support disobeying the Constitution.” I didn’t receive a response.