The Constitution of the United States features a lot of examples of compromise.
The Constitution of the United States features a lot of examples of compromise. Federalism is a system of government where the power is split between the national and the state governments. This feature of our government originated in the debates between the Federalists and the Anti-federalists when drafting the Constitution (1:00). Episode 3 recaps Brutus I, (2:40) Federalist 10 (3:09) and the supremacy clause (3:48).
The Question of the Day asks (5:16) Today we learned that states are in charge of education and while all states receive federal funding for this, the majority of education is locally funded. How could this be a disadvantage of federalism?
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Hi and welcome to the APsolute Recap: US Gov Edition. Today’s episode will recap Federalism
Lets Zoom out:
Unit 1 - Foundations of American Democracy
Topics 1.3, 1.7, & 1.8
Big idea - Constitutionalism
The Constitution of the United States features a lot of examples of compromise. One major example of this is federalism and the role of the national vs local government in a democracy. The debate over this concept was fierce and had two sides: The Federalists and Antifederalists, and was ultimately a fight about how much power the national/federal government should have.
Lets Zoom in:
Before we get into the debate over the role of federalism in the foundation of American democracy, let’s review what federalism is. Federalism is a system of governance where power is shared between units of government, normally at the state and national or federal level. However, not all countries that have federalism have states. More on that in the APsolute recAP Comparative Government edition.
Ok, so let’s break down what that means. Federalism is a system of shared power between the national government in the capital and the state governments. Sidenote: it is common in government to use central,national, and federal government interchangeably. So don’t let a text that uses central rather than national or federal confuse you. They all mean the government in Washington DC. So back to shared power...The president is in charge of the nation and the governors are in charge of the states. They both have power over people who live in the US. Some powers are given to both, like the ability to tax, while others are reserved for the states like education and laws regarding who can drive and when. So how did we come up with this complicated system? To be clear, most countries in the world only have one level of government, not two. So how did we get both?
In order to understand how our dual system came to be we have to turn back to the debates surrounding the writing of the Constitution after the failure of the Articles of Confederation, which we talked about in the previous episode. Federalists favored a strong central government while Anti-federalists opposed this and wanted more power given to the states. Even then, the states had their own cultures and identities which people wanted respected.
In Brutus I, Anti-Federalists warned against a strong government, saying personal liberties would be in danger and it would make much of the basis for breaking away from England meaningless. Rather than a monolithic single republic, there should be a confederation of smaller ones. However, the Federalists pointed out that one of the reasons the first attempt at government failed was that the central government had no power and the interests of the people were too varied to not have a unifying factor.
In Federalist 10, James Madison argues that there are always going to be factions, or groups of people with different opinions, and the only way to ensure some sort of working order is to create a central government with enough power to govern, but also to delegate some powers to the states in order to satisfy regional interests or factions. Quick side note, you do not need to know that Madison wrote Federalist 10 but you cannot confuse it with the ideas of Federalist 51, which we will address in a future episode. Ultimately we will see the compromises between these two groups in numerous places in the Constitution, but our system of federalism is one of those compromises.
Now some of you might be thinking to yourselves, what if a state or states have laws that conflict with the national government. That is a great observation, and one of the reasons some countries don’t bother and create just one level of government. While states have control over many issues locally, a state law CANNOT conflict with a federal one. Meaning, if there is a disagreement between the state law and federal one, the federal one is the one that we follow. This is known as the supremacy clause and it was created as a result of the Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Maryland (one of the cases you need for the exam). Let’s look at minimum wage as an example. There is a federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. States can choose to have higher minimum wages, but cannot have a minimum wage below what the federal government sets. This allows for states that have higher costs of living to adjust accordingly, but also to ensure that no one is paid below what the government says is an acceptable wage.
To recap……
Federalism is a system of government where the power is split between the national and the state governments. This feature of our government originated in the debates between the Federalists and the Anti-federalists when drafting the Constitution. The purpose is to allow a strong government capable of uniting people of varied interests, while also allowing for regional differences in certain instances.
Coming up next on the APsolute RecAP US Government Edition:
The Creation of the Constitution
Today’s Question of the day is about federalism in practice.
Question: Today we learned that states are in charge of education and while all states receive federal funding for this, the majority of education is locally funded. How could this be a disadvantage of federalism?