Comments Elsewhere

Here’s a few limitations on the prerogatives of the several states that the federal Constitution clearly imposes based on any reasonable reading of the original text:

Article I, Section 10, Clause 1: No State shall … grant any Title of Nobility.

Article IV, Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, …

If the legislature of Alabama convened and duly voted to make Roy Moore the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of Alabama and to dissolve itself as a legislative body, granting all legislative power to Lord Moore’s edict, then the federal government would stop them from doing that, probably by means of the Court, on the grounds that states have don’t have the right to grant titles of nobility or create non-republican forms of government. I imagine that you probably wouldn’t like Roy Moore being made Lord Protector (I know that I certainly wouldn’t); but does your support for “states’ rights” commit you to defending their right to do so against federal interference?

If it does, then what has your support for “states’ rights” got to do with federalism anyway, as opposed to outright dissolution of the federal government?

If it doesn’t, then don’t you have to revise your test for “states’ rights,” since you would then be supporting some kinds of federal interference with state prerogatives but not other kinds? And what makes the difference between the kinds that you support and the kinds that you don’t?