How state constitutions became the battleground for American rights and liberties – on both the left and right
State constitutions play a growing role in American politics. But turning to such documents to recognize rights and liberties is not a new project – nor is it an entirely liberal one.
Every state in America possesses its own constitution, aside from the U.S. Constitution. These state constitutions contain individual bills of rights, offering parallel or more extensive protections for liberties guaranteed by the federal Bill of Rights. Recently, voters in numerous states will have the chance to amend their state constitutions or, in some cases, potentially rewrite them entirely. While the U.S. Constitution is rarely amended, state constitutions undergo frequent amendments.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center decision, which struck down Roe v. Wade and ruled that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion, abortion rights supporters have resorted to state constitutions to protect reproductive rights. They have encountered mixed results in asserting that state constitutions implicitly guarantee the right to abortion, but have had more success proposing amendments to explicitly recognize abortion rights.
This trend is not exclusively driven by progressive or conservative interests. In the wake of Richard Nixon's presidency, Warren Burger, a conservative appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, replaced Earl Warren. The conservative shift worried criminal defense advocates and civil rights activists, who feared the Warren Court's landmark decisions would be weakened. Consequently, they turned to state courts and constitutions.
Scholars, advocates, and judges identified a need to take state constitutional rights seriously and developed legal arguments based on state constitutional provisions. One such success was in the realm of education. After the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution did not guarantee a right to education, advocates turned to state courts, citing explicit provisions in state constitutions that mandate the legislature to provide students with an adequate education. They argued that funding disparities among school districts contradicted these provisions.
Written by urgent.news from The Conversation's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
