Back to states' rights. As usual.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday that the Garner case would no doubt be raised, as would questions about Ms. Lynch’s view of the federal government’s asserting itself in recent cases in which white law enforcement officers have not faced state charges after being involved in the deaths of black Americans.

“Why does the federal government feel like it is its responsibility and role to be the leader in an investigation in a local instance?” asked Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who said all state and local options should first be exhausted. “I want to know what her priorities are.”

Tracking the Republican response to this probe will help shed light on whether there are genuine prospects for bipartisan cooperation on the larger issues that have been raised by the Garner and other killings. After the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, hopes rose for bipartisan action against the problem of police over-militarization, an area where there is already some agreement between the civil liberties left and the libertarian right, and beyond that, drug law sentencing and criminal justice reform, another area of left-right overlap.

One Democrat points out that Grassley, Sessions, and Cornyn — all of whom will play a big role in Lynch’s confirmation hearings — were out front in opposition to bipartisan reforms that would have reduced the sentences of many low level drug offenders, arguing they were soft on crime. That perhaps doesn’t bode well for the Garner killing to help spur bipartisan agreement on broader reforms, particularly among the Senate GOP old guard.

On this score, Senator Rand Paul could play an interesting role. After the Ferguson shooting, he came out with a remarkable statement in support of action against police militarization, and even acknowledged that it is understandable that African Americans see racial disparities in the criminal justice system. But Paul’s response also demonstrated lingering disagreements among civil liberties progressives and libertarian conservatives over how deeply the inequities of our criminal justice system are rooted in longstanding racial inequality.

And when Democrats, in a bit of clever trolling, invited Paul to join them in supporting a federal probe into the broader civil rights and racial profiling ramifications of the shooting, he did not, to my knowledge, respond.