text: One part of the problem is the very concept of "State's Rights. It's convenient shorthand, but states don't have "Rights," only individuals (including acting voluntarily, in concert, in private capacities) do. Governments have *Powers*. 
  
  The whole point of having a Federal Constitution was to define and enumerate the limited powers of the Federal government vis-a-vis the reserved powers of the sovereign States. In the narrow area of criminal law, given the Constitution as drafted, insofar as a state's laws do not infringe on individual rights enshrined in the Constitution, the Feds really have no place getting involved. The limited situations where inter-state cooperation was needed for public safety let the camel's nose in under the tent, often via the Commerce Clause and we have been paying the price of a steadily expanding Executive branch and bloated, redundant corpus of Federal criminal statutes ever since, to the detriment of individual rights and the sovereignty of the States.