Lecture 4: Federalism

Concept of Federalism

• Federal vs Unitary

FedState

Concurrent powers

Division of powers

• What areas are exclusively federal responsibilities?

• coin money, wage war, regulate immigration and citizenship

• What areas are exclusively or mostly state responsibilities?

• establish local governments, ratify constitutional amendments, education

• What areas are concurrent?• Tax, borrow money, set up courts

Advantages of a decentralized federal system?

• Better reflects local or regional differences• example: minimum wage

• allows for experimentation• example: Oregon’s assisted suicide?

Disadvantages of federalism

• can inhibit trade and mobility• example: state tuition

• can promote a race to the bottom• example: lower state taxes, lax environmental laws

Gibbons v Ogden (1824)

• Facts of the case• Result: Ct. interpreted “interstate

commerce” broadly, giving greater power to Congress and the federal government.

Civil War

• Are states sovereign--with the right to join and leave the union as they please?

• Article I, section 10--”no confederacies”• “We the People”, not “we the states”

• Outcome of the War:

No!

Post Civil War Era

• Growth of big business and national economy

necessary action by fed govt: starting with regulating railroads, and monopolies

Great Depression and New Deal (1929-41)

• Works Project Administration• Social Security• and much more--eventually with USSC

approval• Wickard v Filburn (1942)• digression--Raich v Gonzalez (2005)

Civil Rights and Integration (1954-74)

• Federal laws and federal troops integrating schools and public accommodations

• Heart of Atlanta Motel v United States (1964)

Great Society (1963-69)

• War On Poverty• Medicare• Medicaid

Reagan “revolution” and devolution

• Less “strings” on reduced federal funding for state programs--from categorical to block grants

- Example of “Welfare” reform in 1990s

• Conservative Supreme Ct reducing federal controls over states

- Examples:- US v Lopez (1995)- US v Morrison (2000) - but more mixed in Raich v Gonzalez (2005)