The Return of the Local?

Michael Carriere says

... liberals placed an extraordinary amount of faith in the reformist nature of the Supreme Court, using law to supersede local tradition in such landmark cases as Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Since the 1960s, the prevailing wisdom in the Democratic party has been that rights gain their authority from the federal government, with the Supreme Court helping to establish this definition on the national level (often to the detriment of local interests and customs).

Vital Source August 2005