What States' Rights?

[guayiya]

The most troublesome issue here is the jump from recognizing 
governmental and corporate bodies as artificial "persons", simply so 
that they can sue and be sued,
to the proposition that, being persons, these bodies have essentially 
the same rights to liberty and property that human beings do.
This move is a terrible category error.
Daniel Hoffman

Volokh, Eugene wrote:

> Ray Kessler writes:
>  
>  (2) Also, I think we all agree that in its original form, in the 
> Anglo-American legal system,  the concept of "rights" only applied to 
> individuals (e.g. Magna Charta, English Bill of Rights of 1688 (?)).   
>  
>     This is a historical assertion, and perhaps it's correct, but I 
> wonder what the support for this is.   As I mentioned, by the 1600s, 
> English publications spoke of the rights of nations.  Locke wrote of 
> the rights both of the people and of princes.  Perhaps there was a 
> time before then that "the concept of 'rights' only applied to 
> individuals" in the English legal system (never in the American legal 
> system), and perhaps in English political theory.  But what reason do 
> we have to actually believe this as a historical matter?
>
>     (4) However, IMHO, using that analogy  muddied the waters and
>     created an oxymoron (in light of the original def. of "right"
>     being limited to individuals.)  I still contend that  in our
>     Anglo-American tradition, prior to the American Revolution, when
>     people perhaps started thinking about how  they would put together
>     a new government composed of previously sovereign "states" (nee
>     colonies), became worried about the fate of the  soon-to-be states
>     in a soon-to-be federal system, started looking around for
>     arguments and concepts to protect the states and created the 
>     oxymoron of "states rights." 
>
>      
>
>         Again, what's the historical support for this historical
>     assertion?  By the Revolution, talk of the rights of nations was
>     routine; I would think the rights of states in a federal union
>     would be a logical application of that well-established principle,
>     not something you need to "look around for" or something that
>     "muddied the waters." 
>
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>
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