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To: elbucko
As far as I understand it, there has never been any such thing as "state's rights".
Only people have rights and states (or States) have powers. Take a read of the Constitution and you will not see a mention of rights held by government, only powers.
7 posted on 02/22/2003 12:05:45 PM PST by Abcdefg
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To: Abcdefg
As far as I understand it, there has never been any such thing as "state's rights". Only people have rights and states (or States) have powers. Take a read of the Constitution and you will not see a mention of rights held by government, only powers.

Webster's current definition of the word "right" includes "something that is due anybody by legal claim". So by definition, all rights are not unalienable. Also, all unalienable rights are not due by legal claim.

Anyway, using current defintions, the term "states rights" is correct.

11 posted on 02/22/2003 3:41:25 PM PST by FreeReign
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To: Abcdefg
Only people have rights and states (or States) have powers.

Really?

"Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men." --Thomas Jefferson

"That every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes, by force of the term, a right to employ all the means requisite and fairly applicable to the attainment of the ends of such power, and which are not precluded by restrictions and exceptions specified in the Constitution, or not immoral, or not contrary to the essential ends of political society." -- Alexander Hamilton

"But the constitution of the United States has not left the right of Congress to employ the necessary means, for the execution of the powers conferred on the government, to general reasoning. To its enumeration of powers is added that of making 'all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution, in the government of the United States, or in any department thereof.' " -- United States Supreme Court, McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

I guess someone forgot to tell the Founding Fathers.

16 posted on 02/22/2003 5:48:51 PM PST by Roscoe
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