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States were sovereign entities before the Constitution. Now power is derived from the people, not states.
by toddh 15y ago
States were sovereign entities before the Constitution. Now power is derived from the people, not states.
- lucasjung 15y agoThat is orthogonal to the issue of sovereignty; in fact, many of the framers firmly believed at all political power is derived from the consent of the governed, regardless of the form of government. They wanted to build a government where that consent is given through ballots rather than taken through coercion. The states are sovereign entities, and one of the most important features of the Constitution is that it preserved their sovereignty even as it subsumed them into a single nation. That is what the word "federal" means: a single nation made up of many sovereign states.