Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2014
ISSN
0006-8047
Publisher
Boston University School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
Our barely functioning Congress seems to embody the issues that this conference on constitutional dysfunction is meant to address. At this moment, however, congressional disarray may result less from institutional design than from our lasting heritage of white supremacy. Republican control of the House owes much to the party's Southern Strategy, which has exploited widespread dissatisfaction with the Democrats' official renunciation of racial stratification. That challenge to the American Way is exacerbated by the idea, outrageous to some, of a black President. That context has some bearing on this Symposium's topic of federalism. For, as Professor Larry Yackle reminds us, "states' rights" have most significantly been invoked in order to defend the Old South's brutally oppressive and exploitative system of racial subordination. I return to this topic.
Recommended Citation
David B. Lyons,
Professed Values, Constructive Interpretation, and Political History: Comments on Sotirios Barber, The Fallacies of States' Rights
,
in
94
Boston University Law Review
1395
(2014).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2972
Included in
Law Commons, Philosophy Commons, Political History Commons, United States History Commons
