Federalism

Federalism, outlined in the 10th Amendment, is the system in which we operate our country. This system functions by having a partition of power amongst regional or federal government. The power is designated by the United States Constitution. Throughout our divine rise as a nation, we have undergone several changes of path. After the establishment of our government we developed a structure called Dual Federalism which is also known as “Layer Cake Federalism” which allowed for enumerated powers, or assigned powers to be allotted to the federal and regional government. This system was in place from 1790 all the up to 1930, when Cooperative Federalism came about between 1930 and 1960. This change allowed for intergovernmental relations, and collaboration on major national priorities between the state and nation. For a very short period prior to the “cooperative” era, we had something called Creative Federalism that is characterized by overloading of cooperation and crosscutting regulations, but this only lasted until 1980. After this short reign, New Federalism stepped in and is the current holder of our governmental title. Within this New Federalism the Constitution, secured by the Supremacy Clause, assigns enumerated powers to the national government, this is also knows as delegated powers. An example of this would be the Commerce Clause which states that Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce. Under this system, this clause was brought into context with Gibbons v. Odgen, where the question “Did the State of New York exercise authority in a realm reserved exclusively to Congress, namely, the regulation of interstate commerce?” was asked and found to be negative. The government also preserves other powers to the states and calls these reserved powers. The Constitution categorizes many specific powers but also identifies many implied powers that are also knows as potential powers for the federal government.