Source: Law & Liberty
by Samuel Postell
“Sean Beienburg’s Progressive States’ Rights: The Forgotten History of Federalism is a novel addition to the study of American political development, uncovering an important tension within American progressivism. The work’s virtue is that it analyzes the early twentieth-century progressives neutrally, considering them as good-faith actors consistent with the American political tradition. By neglecting political theory, however, the book ignores the ways the early progressives departed from the Framers’ understanding of natural rights and rejected their tradition in significant ways. Even as some of the early progressives embraced the concept of ‘states’ rights,’ they abandoned a more universal conception of individual rights as natural and inalienable. They temporarily respected the means of our constitutional order in defiance of its proper end.” (11/13/24)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/states-rights-or-inalienable-rights/