states' rights

Interpretation of the US Constitution that emphasizes the powers retained by individual states and minimizes those given to the federal government, as stated in the Tenth Amendment. The dividing line between state and national sovereignty was left deliberately vague by the framers of the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787.

The interpretation of the doctrine has been argued throughout US political history. The most crucial of these debates erupted over the slavery issue in the years leading up to the Civil War (1861–65) and resulted in the doctrine of nullification (the right of a state to overrule federal laws that oppose its interests), developed by South Carolina in 1832. The practice of slavery was claimed to be among a state's rights, as was the right to secede from the Union. More recently, federal support for civil-rights campaigns during the 1950s and 1960s was sometimes inhibited by a reluctance to challenge states' rights. States' rights became stronger during the Reagan and Bush administrations.