Federalism

9 Pages 2255 Words

se, and for securing interstate commerce. The U.S. Constitutional Convention met May 25- September 17, 1787. It was supposed to only revise the Articles, but ended up recommending more fundamental changes. The proposed constitution prompted many debate arguments all over about the benefits and risks of federalism versus confederal government, This eventually led to the Constitution in 1789.
Federalism in the United States has evolved quite a bit since it was first implemented in 1787. In that time, two major kinds of federalism have dominated political theory. The first, dual federalism, holds that the federal government and the state governments are co-equals. In this theory, parts of the Constitution are interpreted very narrowly, such as the 10th Amendment, the Supremecy Clause, the Neccesary and Proper Clause, and the Commerce Clause. In this narrow interpretation, the federal government has jurisdiction only if the Constitution clearly grants it. In this case, there is a very large group of powers belonging to the states, and the federal government is limited to only those powers explicitly listed in the Constitution. The second, cooperative federalism, asserts that the national government is supreme over the states, and the 10th Amendment, the Supremacy Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Commerce Clause have entirely different meaning. A good illustration of the wide interpretation of these parts of the Constitution is exemplified by the Necessary and Proper Clause's other common name: the Elastic Clause. For the most part, the United States' branches of government operate under the presumption of a cooperative federalism. The shift from dual to cooperative was a slow one, but it was steady.
One of the earliest examples of a shift was in the Supreme Court's Gibbons v. Ogden decision, which ruled in 1824 that Congress's right to regulate commerce under the Commerce Clause could be "exercised to its utmost e...