Reply #37: If I've had one insight about constitutional law, that's it

[uberllama42]

On paper, I think that the federalist argument is compelling. But in practice, it only ever seems to be used to defend discrimination. After a while, you have to wonder if that's what it's really all about. I can think of perhaps one exception, in which the Rehnquist Court tried to set some kind of a rational limit on the Interstate Commerce power (United States v. Lopez, 1995).

If the states' rights argument is valid on its own merits, then perhaps discrimination is an unavoidable result that has to be accepted under our Constitution. But if "states' rights" is a facade that people construct for no other reason than to protect discrimination, then it seems more like something we can safely ignore. The more I see, the more I am convinced that it is the latter.