Abortion- disagree. You’d have women going across state lines to get abortions.
Gambling- agree.
Marriage- disagree, unless marriages in one state are still valid when the couple moves to, or visits, a state which doesn’t allow their type of marriage. If marriages are maintained across state borders, why force couples to travel to get married? Just to tell them, “Your kind ain’t wanted 'round these parts”?
Speed Limits- agree. Their roads, their taxes, their rules.
Drinking Statures- disagree. If you allow states to set their own drinking ages, then you’ll have kids traveling across the borders to get wasted. I can imagine border towns setting up lucrative checkpoints, targeted at teenagers. I can see more accidents as teenagers plan road trips to get hammered. Also, why is a kid old enough to drink in one area… but a hundred yards down the road, he’s suddenly too young?
Prostitution- agree. I’d certainly rather the government make money off of the oldest profession than to see the criminal element continue to profit.
I’m changing jobs in about two months. It’s a good choice for my career- exactly the project I want, better pay, and a better work environment. Unfortunately, it’s literally all the way across the country from where I am now. There aren’t a lot of areas where I can do the job that I do… I can think of, offhand, about five or six states where my job even exists. People don’t always get to choose their location- jobs are too important. What if my new state refused to recognize my marriage because my wife and I are atheists? I’d have to choose between my rights and my career.
No thank you.
Basically, I think it boils down to this- I think that states’ laws should trump those of the federal government… until those laws threaten my rights. States should not be able to take away my rights. Fighting for rights is hard enough when there’s just one entity to deal with- make it fifty entities, and the fight will become nearly impossible. We’d be back to the Jim Crow era.
I’d rather all their funds be channeled towards fighting something more worthwhile. Or perhaps not ‘fighting’ anything, and actually doing something constructive, as opposed to restrictive.
Sure it does. Whining about how a state exercises its own discretionary powers is whining about states’ rights.
No such power exists.
Again, these do not abridge states’ rights because you’re talking about state powers which do not exist.
Nope. That’s not what it means.
Some of what you’re talking about is kind of close. What powers which are not given to the federal government are given to the states, but what you’re missing is that the Supreme Court has ruled that guns and drugs can be regulated by the federal government under the Commerce Clause, and are therefore NOT powers left to the states. They are not states’ rights issues because they don’t affect any powers left to the states. States’ rights does not just amount to whining about federal laws you don’t like and opining about what states “should” be allowed to do. Just because you don’t like a law doesn’t mean it’s stepping on any “rights.”
Diogenes brought up an interesting, yet (IMO) irrelevant distinction in this argument. In this case, Obama isn’t saying that states rights trump Federal but rather says “Federal still is the law, yet I choose not to enforce it.” Whether there’s a federal law that’s ignored in favor of state law or a federal law that’s never created in the first place, the end result is the same: state law prevails.
So we have here a situation where Obama can use Federal law and federal power to enforce against a state level issue. He chooses not to. Call it state “rights” or state “power” or an absence of Federal “rights” or “powers,” you come to the same conclusion: Obama has specifically said in this instance he will adhere to whatever the state legislature has decided in the matter, which is a marked difference from his predecessor.
Yeah, it goes way back. South Carolina, I believe, invented the idea of state nullification, but they were certainly utterly opposed to state’s rights when it came to fugitive slaves.
Although off topic, I might mention that the most extreme advocate of original construction (say Clarence Thomas) becomes activist when faced with an original doctrine they disagree with. Example: I see nothing in the constitution that authorizes the Federal govenment to make drugs illegal anyway.
I’m sorry - history doesn’t go away because you just shrug your shoulders. You said you weren’t aware of the Democrat’s ever being pro-states rights. This argument was a wrenching and divisive one for the Democratic Party, especially over the issues of slavery and race.
Your ignorance of this history doesn’t make it any less relevant, even today.
That was, for all intents and purposes, a completely different political Democratic Party than the modern one. It represented a much different ideology.
Please tell me where in the Constitution it mentions:
marijuana
abortion
gay marriage
gambling
speed limits
drinking age
prostitution
seat belt laws
motorcycle helmet laws
And tell me what issues DO you think states’ right apply to?
According the the Supreme Court, the federal government has the right to regulate drugs under the Commerce Act.
Falls under the federal civil right to privacy.
There is no federal prohibition on gay marriage. States are allowed to recognize them if the want to. DOMA says that other states don’t have to recognize them, and the federal government can’t recognize them, but it doesn’t abrogate any specific state power (it’s Constitutionlity is questionable for other reasons, but not 10th Amendment reasons).
Commerce Clause.
There are no federal speed limits.
There is no federal drinking age. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act threatened to withhold federal highway funding from states to raise the age for purchase and public possession of alcohol to 21. It did not technically force them to raise the actual drinking age. The federal government derived this power, again, under the Commerce Clause. This did not represent an attempt to write a criminal law, it imposed a condition to receive federal funding.
There is no federal ban on prostitution. States can legalize it if they want to. There are two states which have done it.
There are no federal seat belt or helmet laws. Those are all decided by the states.
To whatever powers are not given to the federal government. Prostitution is a good example, I suppose.
How did the feds get the states to comply with the 55 mph speed limit many years back? If states didn’t comply, didn’t they threaten to withhold federal funds from them? Then, I suppose laws were passed that let them set the limit as to what they wanted again on the highways.
With prostitution, how did a certain county or counties in Nevada legalize it, while still being illegal on the fed and state level? Why don’t the feds or state enforcement agencies decide to trump these local laws?
Could some do the same for marijuana on the local level if a city or county voted it in, or for that matter, gambling too, when the states or feds say something differently?
Yep, and the same with helmet and set belt laws. And some states said, “No way, you can keep your damn money”. Seat belts and helmets are not required here in NH for instance.
Yeah, it was originally passed under Nixon as a response to a major oil shortage in the early 70’s (OPEC imposed an embargo on the US for supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War). The theory was that it would save fuel. It derived the power – once again – under the Commerce Clause. It was repealed in the 90’s.
Of course this only applies to those who claim to be in favor of more state’s rights. Naturally those who openly favor more federal control would pick and choose.
Prostitution is not illegal on the federal level. In Nevada, it is state law that determines what counties are allowed to license brothels (basically it goes by population – if the counties goes over a certain population level, it can’t legalize prostitution).
Again, the prostition laws in Nevada are state laws. The answer is no, municpal laws cannot override state laws, just like state laws cannot override federal laws?
I have no idea who you’re talking about, but as a matter of hard legal fact, states can’t override federal powers and that’s the end of it.
It’s not a question of personally “approving” of anything. I think marijuana should be totally legalized, for instance, but that doesn’t mean the federal government doesn’t have the legal power to regulate it. I personally don’t support regulation of just about anything on your list (except maybe a drinking age), but not liking a federal law doesn’t mean it’s an imposition ons states’ rights.
I’m hardly ignorant, I simply considered it irrelevant. I perhaps should have said “at least after the two parties switched places” or “the modern Democratic party”, but that’s the sort of thing normally understood. It simply wasn’t the same institution back then.