Federalism arguments are usually veils for substantive policy goals

Evidence

When people or groups demand central control, they do not want big government as such. Few people care (and why should they?) whether government is big or small or at what level. They care about results. They care about whether they feel free or stifled. Arguments about centralism, or decentralism, are usually surrogates for something else. Southerners who preached states’ rights, before (and after) the civil rights revolution, were not really professing a political theory. They had a shopping list of things they wanted, and they knew which stores carried the goods. White supremacy was high on the list. Conservatives still talk about states’ rights: but when it comes to something like gay marriage or medical malpractice or the question of how much money a plaintiff can squeeze from a business defendant, they plead frantically with Washington to rescue them from local insanity. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3801

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on the Cooley-era and states’-rights material; echoes the instrumentalist reading of racial conservatism found in the civil-rights chapters. — connects to: Federalist Society federalism opposes the deliberately national structure of pollution statutes — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 538; Seemingly substantive policy domains conceal underlying partisan self-entrenchment battles. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 536; Apparent conservative ideological contradictions are strategically coherent — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1693 (+2 more)
• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s method of reading moral-panic rhetoric as displaced class/identity signaling.

Broader Connections

• Seemingly substantive policy domains conceal underlying partisan self-entrenchment battles. #expands (0.85) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 536
• The debate arose over the fundamental question of the source of federal sovereignty. Did the Union derive its authority from the states, or the people acting through the states, or the people… #exemplifies (0.85)
• Apparent conservative ideological contradictions are strategically coherent #expands (0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1693
• The frugality-of-government question displaced the constitutional question #exemplifies (0.78) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 307