Editing States' rights (section)

==Background==
The balance of federal powers and those powers held by the states as defined in the [[Supremacy Clause]] of the [[United States Constitution|U.S. Constitution]] was first addressed in the case of ''[[McCulloch v. Maryland]]'' (1819). The Court's decision by Chief Justice [[John Marshall]] asserted that the laws adopted by the federal government, when exercising its constitutional powers, are generally paramount over any conflicting laws adopted by state governments. After ''McCulloch'', the primary legal issues in this area concerned the scope of Congress' constitutional powers, and whether the states possess certain powers to the exclusion of the federal government, even if the Constitution does not explicitly limit them to the states.<ref name=Constitution/><ref name="autogenerated1">[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1696012 Orbach, Callahan & Lindemmen, "Arming States' Rights: Federalism, Private Lawmakers, and the Battering Ram Strategy", ''Arizona Law Review'' (2010)]</ref>