Federalism and Federal-State Relations
Since its early history the Supreme Court has repeatedly faced challenging issues pertaining to the division of constitutional authority between the federal and state legislatures, federal versus state courts, and, ultimately, the struggles related to the
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Federalism and Federal-State Relations
Different governmental systems are characterized by different levels of centralization. Authoritarian systems have the most centralized power, whereas the United States is one of many countries having some form of a federal system with distinct levels of government possessing varying degrees of power. Therefore, as Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in New State Ice Company v. Liebmann (1932), “it is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory, and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the nation.” But what do we mean by a “federal system”? What complexities are associated with the federal-state division of power in America? And how have Supreme Court decisions helped to define and shape the distribution of federal-state power in order to alleviate the country’s problems? The answer to the first question seems simple. As Peltason explains, in a federal system “a constitution divides governmental power between a central government and one or more subdivisional governments, giving each substantial functions” (1997, 17, quoted in Epstein and Walker 2020, 336). Elazar (1984, 2) expands on Peltason’s observation, defining federalism as the “mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both.”
© The Author(s) 2021 C. M. Lamb and J. R. Neiheisel, Constitutional Landmarks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55575-7_4
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The second question is not so easily answered because federalism in the United States is complex depending on how it is examined. From the viewpoint of the average American, Epstein and Walker (2020, 336) note that “people may not understand which level of government makes specific policies. In addition, government may seem so remote to some citizens that they may not even know the names of their representatives.” Walker (2000, 15–16) provides a more in-depth explanation: American federalism “contains a remarkable cluster of contrasting characteristics.” He insists that it is “overloaded and undernourished,” “top heavy and bottom heavy,” “overregulated and underregulated,” “activist and passive,” “co-optive and cooperative,” and “competitive as well as collaborative.” From the standpoint of constitutional law and politics, this complexity is compounded by the fact that the Supreme Court has limited power; it can only resolve problems if they are properly presented to the judicial system, including meeting the requirements of jurisdiction, justiciability, and standing discussed in Chapter 1. And just because the Court hands down a ruling by no means guarantees that it will be implemented or enforced in the real world (see, e.g., Canon and Johnson 1999; Rosenberg 2008). For these and other reasons, numerous scholars have investigated the fed
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