It is concerned not only with the interests of states but also with the interests of regions within states. He noted, for example, the "diverging interests between the Tidewater and Piedmont areas" in Virginia, and the desirability of ensuring that "each region should be able to defend itself against the encroachment of the other regions." The closer decision-making is to the local level, the more likely that regional priorities can be expressed and defended if necessary.

Like John C. Calhoun, Owsley saw the doctrine of state rights as essential to the defense of minority interests and individual liberty against the tyranny of the majority. He argued that, "It was not a positive doctrine; it did not contemplate a program of exploitative legislation at the expense of other regions." Its aim was not to vest more power in a group of states for purposes of gaining advantage over other states, but rather to defend important political and cultural ideals against attack by a majority. Owsley, like Calhoun, distinguished between positive and negative rights, between the power to attack and the right of defense. To those who ask, "State rights to do what?" Owsley would say state rights to defend liberty against the tyranny of the majority. The role of government, in turn, is limited to,

…only enough government to prevent men from injuring one another. [The South] was, by its very nature, a laissez faire society, an individualistic society where land, water, and timber were practically free. It only asked to be let alone. State rights, local and regional autonomy, did not make for a uniform, standardized society and government.

It is sometimes argued, by opponents of state rights, that the main right for which the South really had concern was their right to keep slaves. Owsley counters this by highlighting the importance of individual liberty for the political philosophy of state rights, arguing that:

…[economic and social interests] were not the only interests which the state-rights doctrine was expected to protect from an overbearing and unsympathizing national government. Perhaps the greatest vested interest was "personal liberty," the old Anglo-Saxon principles expressed in the Magna Carta, bill of rights, habeas corpus act, supported in the American Revolution, and engrafted finally in every state constitution of the independent states, as "bills of rights." These bills of rights guaranteed freedom of religion, freedom of speech, of thought, of press, of assembly, right of petition, freedom from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, right of trial by jury, and prohibited the taking of property without due process of law – guaranteed, in short, the fundamental rights which Jefferson had called the "inalienable rights of man" and Locke and Rousseau had called the "natural rights" – right of life, liberty, property, and the free pursuit of happiness as long as the free pursuit of this object did not encroach upon the pursuit of another's just rights.