Federalism

In a federal system, two levels of government each have real authority over the same people. The U.S. Constitution lists the powers of Congress — to tax, regulate interstate and foreign commerce, coin money, make war, and pass laws “necessary and proper” to carry out those powers — and declares the Constitution and federal laws “the supreme Law of the Land.” The Tenth Amendment adds that powers “not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The framers devised federalism as a middle path between the weak league of the Articles of Confederation and a single centralized government. Madison argued that dividing power between two levels, as well as among branches, would give citizens a “double security” for their rights.

The balance has shifted many times. In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), the Supreme Court read federal power broadly. Southern leaders invoked states’ rights to protect slavery, and secession in 1860–61 was the most extreme claim of state sovereignty; the Union victory in the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment put new limits on what states could do to their citizens. In the twentieth century, the New Deal expanded federal economic regulation, and in the civil rights era federal courts and laws overrode segregationist states that again claimed states’ rights. Debates over federal power continue in areas from health care to elections.

• States run elections, schools, and most criminal law; the federal government conducts foreign policy, coins money, and regulates interstate commerce.
• In 1957 President Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce school desegregation at Central High School in Little Rock over the opposition of Arkansas’s governor.
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 used federal power to protect voting in states that had disenfranchised Black citizens.