At the conclusion of a largely inconsequential Presidential debate in a largely inconsequential election between then-incumbent President Bill Clinton and Republican challenger Bob Dole, back in 1996, I remember Dole making a symbolic gesture. He noted how much he revered the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a statement that put him well in line with American conservatism and the GOP at the time. I don’t hear that statement nearly as much anymore.
The bookend to the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment, has curiously fallen silent from the voices of Republican orthodoxy in recent decades. Indeed, its insistence upon the system we call Federalism, whereby Federal power concentrated in Washington, DC, shares power with the individual governments of all fifty states, has proven in recent days to be an abject failure. It was included as a concession to Anti-Federalists, who feared too much centralized power. Interestingly enough, Anti-Federalists comprised some of the harshest critics of Great Britain prior to the American Revolution, men like Patrick Henry and John Hancock.
Federalism and states’ rights has proven to be highly ineffective with coronavirus vaccine rollout, and more recently than that, has shown its severe limitations when we consider the crippling failure of the power grid in the fiercely independent state of Texas. I have always looked upon the very notion of states’ rights with great suspicion, being that I live in a deep red, Deep South state that has used the Tenth Amendment to justify everything from a refusal to integrate to a refusal to accept Medicaid funding.
My political heroes in American Presidencies have always been strong executives who have proven conclusively that national government is often greatly superior to government granted to the states. For one, we know that some states are better managed and better funded than other states. A cursory look at the vaccine rollout can show us that. Down here in Alabama, vaccine distribution has been shatter-shot and chaotic. We know broad problems are present here, such as a failure to evenly and fairly distribute shots to minorities and people living in rural counties, but beyond that, we can’t see much of anything especially revealing. For the most part, getting vaccinated depends entirely on who you know and who you are.
The purpose of the Tenth Amendment is to provide a necessary rule of construction and a reaffirmation of the nature of federalism.
Since World War II, the United States Supreme Court has consistently ruled against cases challenging the powers of Congress. In effect, the Supreme Court has decided that Congress has the power to determine the scope of its own authority. Justices and commentators have publicly wondered whether the tenth amendment retains any legal significance.
Aware of this, one could say that the Republican Party, at least as it used to be, has used the Tenth Amendment as a means of demanding its way. Once, in a more dignified, if not sensible time, it used to be a given that any party or President would not question the legal precedent and authority of the Supreme Court of the United States. Informed of the political realities that continued to use the Tenth Amendment as a rhetorical device, no matter how empty, one might think saner minds would prevail. Sadly, we do not currently live in such times.
Here in Alabama, political leaders are hellbent on doing it their way, and Washington, DC, be damned. To some extent, we always felt and acted in this fashion. What is ever more paradoxical is how disliked Montgomery, our capital city, (the capitol building itself colloquially referred to as “Goat Hill”) and its politics are perceived in the general population. And to expand this argument outward, can any American point to any state’s government with any satisfaction as evidence of competence and good public service? The only example that comes to my mind is Michael Dukakis’ so-called Massachusetts Miracle, a myth that led him to the 1988 Democratic Nomination. One could also argue that Jimmy Carter was an excellent Governor of Georgia, but not exactly the best President.
We have a schizophrenic notion of state government in this nation. We demand it, on one hand, but criticize it heavily on the other. The center cannot hold. I’d as soon have a more powerful centralized government, and if that means I’m arguing for socialism, if not statism, then I admit it. I am. I don’t trust states’ rights and I never have. I have lived in two states and one District in my life. I despise Alabama politics, found much fault in Georgia government, and could find much to criticize in the District of Columbia, though its local government was the most progressive of any place I called home.
Our neighbors across the pond in the UK have devolved government from Westminster, starting during Tony Blair’s Premiership in the 1990’s.
In the United Kingdom, devolution is the Parliament of the United Kingdom statutory granting of a greater level of self-government to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the London Assembly and to their associated executive bodies the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, the Northern Ireland Executive and in England, the Greater London Authority and combined authorities.
Devolution differs from federalism in that the devolved powers of the subnational authority ultimately reside in central government, thus the state remains, de jure, a unitary state. Legislation creating devolved parliaments or assemblies can be repealed or amended by central government in the same way as any statute.
Devolution does not alter UK Parliamentary sovereignty, which means the UK Parliament can pass and repeal legislation for all parts of the United Kingdom, including in relation to devolved matters.
These reforms had been long-promised and have had mixed results. They have had led to at least one up or down vote in Scotland in 2014, a referendum that, had it passed, would have set Scotland up as its own independent nation. Another vote may follow quite shortly, even this year. Brexit exacerbated this trend towards Scottish independence.
I am reminded of the old phrase: careful what you wish for—you just might get it. Still, to back up a bit, even Goat Hill is capable of surprising me from time to time. The Alabama Senate passed a bill to legalize medical marijuana on Wednesday, a development I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. It’s easy to be cynical about the decision. No doubt legal pot will be taxed. With my anxiety disorder, I qualified for medical marijuana when I was a resident of the District of Columbia, but it required quite a bit of slight-of-hand to obtain it legally and possess it legally. The dispensary I used was right on the Maryland border, and had I strayed even a mile away from the boundary, I could have been arrested for simple possession.
Alabama is a much larger territory by land mass, but I know that two votes, one in the Senate and one in the House, even if it is signed into law by our reclusive and absentee Governor, is going to be fraught with needless complications and red tape. Until Federal guidelines are amended that downgrade marijuana from Nixon-era designations which state that pot is a majorly dangerous drug and as such, assign major criminal penalties for sale, possession, and consumption—until they are changed to the reality that marijuana is basically a harmless drug and always has been, legal wording is going to have to be awfully creative. Maybe states’ rights aren’t all that bad, but a broken clock is right twice a day, too.