Progressive States' Rights: The Forgotten History of Federalism (Constitutional Thinking) - Hardcover

Beienburg, Sean

 
9780700636198: Progressive States' Rights: The Forgotten History of Federalism (Constitutional Thinking)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0700636196 ISBN 13: 9780700636198
Publisher: University Press of Kansas, 2024

Synopsis

Today, when politicians, pundits, and scholars speak of states’ rights, they are usually referring to Southern efforts to curtail the advance of civil rights policies or to conservative opposition to the federal government under the New Deal, Great Society, and Warren Court. Sean Beienburg shows that this was not always the case, and that there was once a time when federalism—the form of government that divides powers between the state and federal governments—was associated with progressive, rather than conservative, politics.

In Progressive States’ Rights, Sean Beienburg tells an alternative story of federalism by exploring states’ efforts in the years before the New Deal of shaping constitutional discourse to ensure that a protective welfare and regulatory governmental regime would be built in the states rather than the national government. These state-level actors not only aggressively participated in constitutional politics and interpretation but also specifically sought to create an alternative model of state-building that would pair a robust state power on behalf of the public good with a traditionally limited national government.

Current politics generally collapse policy and constitutional views (where a progressive view on one policy also assumes a progressive view on the other), but Beienburg shows that this was not always true, and indeed many of those most devoted to progressive policy views were deeply committed to a conservative constitutionalism.

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About the Author

Sean Beienburg is assistant professor in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University.

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Publisher
University Press of Kansas
Publication date
2024
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0700636196
ISBN 13 
9780700636198
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
344