WCPT 820 Interview: Alison LaCroix

Edwin Eisendrath is joined by Allison LaCroix, the Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School.

LaCroix discussed the evolving nature of federalism and states' rights. She explained that federalism involves distributed power among national, state, and local governments, tracing its roots to the British Empire and the American colonial period.

"What we have now, in 2025, through the text of the Constitution, actual practice and lived governance and cases coming from the Supreme Court says, yes, in fact, states are real," LaCroix told WCPT. "They have a domain that they can operate in and are supposed to operate in, and that domain doesn't totally overlap with the national government. And there are things that the national government can do, there are things the states can do, and that's not an overlapping set of things. 

"So states aren't just the agents of Washington, D.C. And we know this in lots of ways. We see it all the time. And we can think of, under the Biden administration, when we had the governor of Texas saying there's an invasion at the Southern border and putting up fences and all sorts of things. And then we can think of it today, with lots of different states saying we are going to protect migrants and protect other sort of populations and rights. So it's on both and all sides of the political spectrum, and always has been. But I think today it's a surprise to many people to see blue states, I'll say, claiming states rights, because our past hundred or so years of experience has been that it was the right, it was conservative, it's segregationist states saying to the federal government, no, you can't desegregate the schools. But in fact, states rights arguments go back and have always been found on all sides of the political spectrum."

LaCroix also addressed the Supreme Court's role in defining federal power.

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