federalism ppt for law student

1. Federalism
• Sovereignty is shared between central and
state (regional) governments
• Sovereignty = no higher authority
• Local units make some decisions without
regard to national preferences

2. Advantages
• Recognizes local interests and differences
• Prevents secession (usually)
• Check federal government power
• Managing large country
• Promotes competition among jurisdictions
• Flexibility
• Innovation
• Citizen participation
• A vital Congress
• Local autonomy

3. Disadvantages
• Policies are not uniform
• Protects powerful local interests
• Inefficiency
• Lack of Accountability
• Obstructive
• harmful spillover effects
• It can make for weak parties
• Can lead to a parochial Congress
• Weakened nationalism

4. Other Systems
• Confederation:
– States are sovereign
– Switzerland
• Unitary:
– National Government sovereign
– England, France, Italy

5. American Federalism
• Restrictions on states’ powers
– Coining money
– No treaties
– Bills of attainders
– Ex Post Facto Laws

6. American Federalism
• Federal government guarantees
– Republican state governments
– Admitting new states
– Uniform taxes
– State to State
– “Full faith and credit” with respect to other state’s laws
– Extradition
• Elastic Clause
– Necessary and proper for carrying out congress’ powers

7. Problems arising from federalism
McCulloch v Maryland (1819)
Nullification
Gibbons v Ogden (1824)

8. McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
• “Necessary and Proper” clause
• National Bank is allowed
• States can’t tax federal government
• Federal government is supreme

9. Nullification
• States can’t declare federal laws
unconstitutional
• States are not the Supreme Court

10. Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)
• NY gave Ogden exclusive navigational
rights
• Federal Government gave Gibbons license
• Gibbons won due to interstate commerce

11. Different Types of Federalism

12. Dual Federalism (1789 – 1930)
• Layer Cake (1865 – 1930)
• Marble Cake (1930s – Present)
– Cooperative Federalism (1930s – 1960s)
– Creative Federalism (1960s)
– Competitive Federalism (1970s –1980s)

13. Dual Federalism (1789 – 1930)
• Federal Government supreme in its sphere
– Articles I – IV, VI
• States supreme in their sphere
– Article IV, Tenth Amendment
• Shared Powers
– Tenth Amendment

15. Layer Cake Federalism
(1865 – 1930)
• Each level sovereign in its own reign
• Growing government at both levels, with states as
senior partners in police powers and providing
services, federal government in regulating
commerce.
• "to perfect the free economy"
• But Federal government becoming stronger to
implement:
– 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments

16. Layer Cake Federalism
(1865 – 1930)
• The Morrill Act of 1862:
Land grants to states to support public
institutions of higher education
First time the national government
participated financially in a program of state
welfare

17. Layer Cake Federalism
(1865 – 1930)
• Interstate Commerce Act 1887
• Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890
• Both a part of the expansion of federal authority
over commerce that took place during that period,
often at the expense of states.
• Thirty state railroad commissions, for example,
were replaced by a federal authority, as were
existing state antitrust and lottery laws

18. 16th amendment (1913)
• Federal Income tax
• Watershed for twentieth century, modern
federalism.
• Size of the tax was extremely modest by
today's standards
• Emphasis on intergovernmental transfers
and the use of taxing and spending powers
to further national policies

19. 1920s:11 Grant-in-Aid programs
• As the country moved from a primarily rural,
agrarian society to an urban industrial one, large-
scale social institutions developed to cushion some
of the worst social dislocations caused by the
changes.
• Even with the capacity to levy progressive income
taxes, national efforts at social welfare programs
were highly tentative at first.

20. 1920s:11 Grant-in-Aid programs
• By 1920 there were eleven grants-in-aid
programs. Challenges to the legality of such grants were
rejected by the court on the grounds that participation in
the programs was voluntary on the part of the states and
thus did not violate separation of powers.
• The earliest such program in health, the 1921 Sheppard-
Towner Act maternity and infancy health program aroused
much opposition from state and professional groups, and
was allowed to die in 1929.

22. Marble Cake Federalism (Cooperative Federalism):
1930s – 1960s
• Federal Government more interfering in local
matters
• Shared functions, focus on providing services,
broadly collaborative patterns.
• Federal Government provides funds
• States administer
• 1930s Examples:
– FDIC
– Civilian Conservation Corps

23. Postwar
• 21 new grant-in-aid programs: 1946-1961
• Eisenhower attempted to reverse the centralizing
trend in the national government's involvement in
domestic policy
• established the Commission on Intergovernmental
Relations to identify activities to return to the
states.
• Commission found few such programs,
• No changes were implemented.

24. Civil Rights
• Courts, for the first time, asserted national authority in
regards to civil rights under the equal protection clause of
the fourteenth amendment
• Pitted southern states as deniers rather than protectors of
liberty against the national government.
• Nullification was revived as "interposition" as states
sought to defy federal orders to integrate schools in the
wake of Brown v. Board of Education. State legislators
revived the theory that the Constitution represented a
compact

25. Creative Federalism (1960s)
• States are implementers of federal mandates
• Federal Government and States share costs and
administrative responsibilities
• Guidelines, rules, funds from Federal Government
• Intergovernmental fiscal transfers
• Crosscutting regulation and responsibilities
• Examples:
– Medicare, Medicaid, War on Poverty, Civil
Rights Legislation

26. Creative Federalism (1960s)
• Federal government often bypassed states
entirely
• Programs aimed at both racial and
economic injustice.
• Categorical and project grants: aimed at
specific problems or groups
• Civil Rights Acts attached cross-cutting
provisions on all grants

27. Competitive (Fiscal) Federalism
(1970s-1980s)
• New Federalism
• Nixon, Carter, Reagan
• Reduce national control over the grants-in-aid
programs
• Move national programs to field regions
• Streamline services
• Opposite has occurred
• Power has not returned to states

28. Competitive (Fiscal) Federalism
(1970s-1980s)
If no compliance
– Penalties
• Equal Opportunity Act (1982): criminal or civil penalties
States promise to develop their own programs
– Restrictions on other programs
• Over 60 federal programs
• Crossover Requirements
– State has to do something in return for money
– Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act of 1974

29. Competitive (Fiscal) Federalism
(1970s-1980s)
• Grants-in-Aid:
General Revenue Sharing
Block Grants
Categorical Grants

30. Block Grants and General
Revenue Sharing:
Reduce federal requirements
States have greater freedom while setting
the stage for withdrawal of federal fiscal
support.

31. (General) Revenue Sharing
• Great freedom to spend money
• Distribution based on states’:
– Population
– Local tax effort
– Wealth

32. Block Grants
• “Block” (chunk) of money
• Block of programs combined
• Few strings attached
• Welfare Reform (1996)

33. Block Grant Types
• Operational Grants
– Running programs
• Capital Grants
– Building plants
• Entitlement Grants
– Transfer money to individuals/families

34. Categorical Grants
• Specific purpose
• Specific criteria
• Some matching state money
• Example: Build an airport or dorm
• Two Types:
– Project Grants
• Competitive applications from states and individuals
– Formula Grants
• Welfare programs

35. Block Grants and Revenue Sharing vs
Categorical Grants
• Block Grants grew more slowly because:
Distrust of state governments
Federal government wanted more control
Revenue Sharing dilutes interests
Revenue Sharing gives all communities
money

36. New Federalism (1980s-1990s)
• Cooptive Federalism
• Reagan tried to reduce 83 Categorical Grants into
6 large block grants
• Congress replaced 57 categorical grants with 6
block grants but with many strings attached
• “state and local government responses to 1981
federal aid cuts—through replacement funding,
through a variety of financial coping and delaying
measures, and through administrative reforms”
actually produced “higher service levels than
otherwise would have been the case”

37. New Federalism (1980s-1990s)
• Deregulation
• Supply-side reductions
• Deficit dominates: Revenue cuts without
matching spending cuts  impasse in
government.
• Devolution Revolution (but not always carried
out)…..

38. Devolution Revolution
• Republicans take over both Houses in 1994 election
• Contract with America (1995-1997)
• “The era of big government is over”—Clinton
• Welfare Reform
• Highway speed limits
• States could administer certain programs in Safe
Drinking Water Act
• States decide how federal rural development funds could
be used

39. Devolution Revolution?
• “But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens
were left to fend for themselves” (Clinton)
• 13 new block grant programs enacted, but also included
major new restrictions on how the moneys could be
spent.
• Court upholds the use of cross-over sanctions in tying
highway funds to minimum drinking age.
• Car-jacking, stalking federal crimes
• National criteria for drivers’ licenses, food safety
• Nullified state laws restricting telecommunications
competition
• The revolution “has mostly fizzled”

40. Second-Order Devolution
• A flow of power and responsibility from the
states to local governments

41. Third-Order Devolution
• Increase role of nonprofit organizations and
private groups in policy implementation

42. Federal Control
• “He who pays the piper calls the tune”
• Conditions of Aid:
– Requirements if states want money
– Number of strings tends to increase
• Mandates:
Requirements that states must carry out
Environmental Protection
• Ocean Dumping Ban (1988)
Civil Rights
• Americans with Disabilities (1990)

43. Mandates
• Most concern civil rights and environmental
protection
• Different forms:
• Regulatory statutes and amendments that
expand on previous legislation
• New areas of federal involvement
• Some are easy to interpret and administer
and others more difficult (Americans with
Disabilities Act- 1990)
• School desegregation

44. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act
(1995)
• Stop Federal mandates (requirements) on States
and local governments unless Federal government
helps pay for the costs of programs
• Made Congress more aware of this issue, but…
• Not always effective:
 Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
 EPA requires states to build auto pollution-testing
stations

45. Conditions of Aid
• Voluntary, in theory, but states receive 25%
or more of its budget from federal
government