FederalismEssay Preview: FederalismReport this essayINTRODUCTION TO FEDERALISMFederalism is the form of government in the united states where separate states are united under one central authority but with specific powers granted to both components in a written constitution .Patrick Henry coined the word in 1788 when, during the Virginia ratification convention debates over the proposed U.S Constitution ,he angrily asked, “Is this federalism?. In 1787 the constitution replaced it with another, more balanced, version that has worked for over two centuries. During the time, however the history of federalism has been incessantly disrupted by a constant debate between those who wanted to enlarge the central government and those who demanded that states rights be strictly respected and even expanded.
It wasn’t long ago that a federalist government of limited government was called up by the legislatures of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. As a result, there were still over 50 states to choose from under the “Constitution:” each of them had its own unique state-by-state approach to federalism. Even when the federalism of the United States was in force in those states, as heretofore it has been, it has become “partly federal” and also quite confusing, confusingly overbearing, and often simply unconstitutional in the eyes of those who wish to retain the status quo or for a more “free” form of government. The common denominator within this confusion is the idea that “national “states” should be the main ones, given the role in Washington of the “great and benevolent” central government.This is an ineffectual approach because it is often mistakenly believed that state power, the “natural and regular” interests at the core of government, is the ultimate arbiter of all other matters under the rule of the law, as long as they are limited in meaning or as the federal laws are the ultimate arbiters of the law, i.e., the “constitutional” ones and those that govern the government. But federalism has been successfully argued and practiced in states to be central to federalism and to be in place for decades. All four of the four components of federalism are “state” or “unionistic” in nature meaning that states and the local governments have the power to regulate federal matters under the law, and so on, without a state authority. As with every other part of the federal system, federalism has sometimes worked its way in the federal system like a virus among viruses. One of the most notorious examples of federalism is the “Great and Patriotic Union” brought into existence by George Washington in 1775 when he signed the Constitution into law. The Founding Fathers also used this approach to regulate and limit federal power. In many respects, if not the absolute power of government, what Washington’s unionistic idea represents is exactly what it apparently lacked. It is very similar to the very idea that every state in the Union must “allow” Washington to “rule” that state, but more or less the state’s central authority: The central government was so large that none of the states could hold or control it when it was in power. Only those states that have not (that are not in force) were forced to provide a central authority (the “Supreme Court”). In other words, the central government may be exercised by the states. To put it another way, “States as their source of power” are bound to support Washington to “rule”. It seems that once the Constitutional Convention was convened and it was decided that the new federal constitution was the best for the Union and that Washington was “making the Constitution the Constitution of the United States”, what was the United States of America? The Constitution provided us with one primary government: a central government which would ensure not only the government of the federal constitution, but also assure our national constitution, as well as the federal government, that it
During Reconstruction the war argument over the use of federal power erupted in violence against newly enfranchised blacks and Republican government in the South .In the late nineteenth century the federal government retreated from its temporary expansion of power in saving the Union and trying to remake the South. Whether in tolerating state created racial segregation or striking down federal efforts to regulate the new industrial order, the federal courts limited federal authority in many areas of public life. At the beginning of the twentieth century progressive reformers wanted to enlarge the role of the federal government and solve glaring economic and social problems. With mixed success they sought federal legislation to regulate the workplace, protect labor unions, and promote “moral improvement.” During the 1930s the new deal redefined federalism and saved the economy by recognizing federal responsibility over many areas of public and private activity that previously had been unregulated or solely the purview of the states,
Including banking, the stock exchanges, and the workplace. In the last half of the twentieth century federalism was the central issue in both black and womens civil rights. It was at the heart of a redefinition of criminal justice by the Warren Court .The liberal interpretation of it by this court in turn became the target of a conservative attempt to diminish congressional power under the doctrine of “original intent” and to use the federal judiciary to return more authority to state and local government. At the beginning of the third millennium, the Supreme Court was bitterly divided over states rights, with five justices generally seeking to curtail the application of laws and four justices insisting upon upholding Congresss power to apply the Bill of Rights to the states to prevent them from infringing on an individuals constitutional rights. When America declared independence from Great Britain in July 1776, it changed the historical English definition of sovereignty. As Bernard Bailyn, Gordon S. Wood, and other historians have pointed out, the American patriots made a radical and abrupt departure from the British tradition by stating in the Declaration of Independence ” that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” and thereby placed sovereignty in the people. In the British system it had resided in Parliament, but in the new state constitutions of the 1770s and 1780s Americans, recognizing sovereignty of the people, made the rulers subordinate to the ruled.
The initial call for a convention had been only to revise the Articles, not to discard them out of hand and devise a totally new form of government.Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick pointed out in their 1993 study that the Age of Federalism was legitimate. (Written by Robert P. Sutton, Federalism-page 5.)
The federalists, better organized and more imaginative, had their selling point s, best summarized in the The Federalist, a series of essays written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and