Roger Sherman, a delegate from Connecticut to the Continental Congress, was instrumental in defining civil rights and states’ rights in the new nation. His statements from that time may inform the present moment.
Sherman was a key figure in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitution, and the amendments that came to be known as the Bill of Rights. He also revised the Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut in 1784, including an Abstract and Declaration of the Rights and Privileges of the People of this State, asserting that Connecticut “shall forever be and remain a free, sovereign and independent State … under the sole authority of the People thereof, independent of any King or Prince whatever.”
Also in 1784, Roger wrote in defense of the Articles of Confederation, “The Honorable Continental Congress have taken due care to secure the rights of the separate states,” and “Each state retains its SOVEREIGNTY, FREEDOM, and INDEPENDENCE, and every power, jurisdiction and right, not expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.”
In the Connecticut Courant in 1788, Sherman wrote, “The immediate security of the civil and domestic rights of the people will be in the governments of the particular states. And as the different states have different local interests and customs which can best be regulated by their own laws, it would not be expedient to admit the federal government to interfere with them any further than necessary for the good of the whole.”
Sherman was also concerned about executive power. He believed that the President of the United States should be “nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the Legislature into effect,” and he “was against enabling any one man to stop the will of the whole,” as the legislature “was the depository of the supreme will of the Society.”
Despite these early warnings, our history has found it expedient to admit federal interference in the states and to relinquish powers to the President. Now that interference, and the abdication of power by the legislature, threaten the security of the civil and domestic rights of the people in Connecticut. The current federal administration is testing the limits of executive authority with orders that violate the most basic individual rights despite Connecticut’s own strong guarantees to equal protection and due process.
Concerns about the erosion of civil-rights protections by devolution under a new federalism assume that federal protections are stronger than the protections offered by the state. This moment in Connecticut turns that argument on its head. Though the Fourteenth Amendment enabled the United States to impose civil rights to emancipation, equal protection, public education, and accommodations for disabilities, among others, the same “power to enforce” now brings regressive and repressive federal actions.
Under a new progressive federalism, Connecticut can be a safe haven of civil rights for our residents. If there are any federal protections that exceed those assured by our state laws and Constitution, then we can ask our General Assembly and our governor to enact those protections here. I have greater confidence in our assembly in Hartford than in the Congress at Washington, D.C.
I wonder, what would Sherman say?
Walter Glomb lives in Vernon.