For example, the Articles allowed the Congress of the Confederation the power to sign treaties and declare war, but it could not raise taxes to pay for an army and all major decisions required a unanimous vote.
[2] The movement for federalism was greatly strengthened by the reaction to Shays' Rebellion of 1786–1787, which was an armed uprising of yeoman farmers in western Massachusetts.
The rebellion was fueled by a poor economy that was created, in part, by the inability of the confederal government to deal effectively with the debt from the American Revolutionary War.
It hoped that more states would be represented and that their delegates or deputies would be authorized to examine areas broader than simply commercial trade.
Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens".
[9] The convention had begun altering its original plan but then decided to abandon continued efforts of emendation, and officially set about constructing a new Constitution of the United States.
[10] The most forceful defense of the new Constitution was The Federalist Papers, a compilation of 85 anonymous essays published in New York City to convince the people of the state to vote for ratification.
Washington and Madison had personally pledged to consider amendments, realizing that they would be necessary to reduce pressure for a second constitutional convention that might drastically alter and weaken the new federal government.
This one was based on the policies of Alexander Hamilton and his allies for a stronger national government, a loose construction of the Constitution, and a mercantile (rather than agricultural) economy.
They stressed that the national debt created by the new government would bankrupt the country, and that federal bondholders were paid through taxes collected from honest farmers and workingmen.
Three delegates were sent to Washington, DC to negotiate New England's terms only to discover the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war with the British.
As the U.S. Constitution does not specifically define many dividing lines between the layers of government, the Supreme Court settled the issue in New York.
The question was answered particularly in the cases, McCulloch v. Maryland, in which the court unanimously found that the states could not tax a federal institution that was deemed legitimate and appropriate, Gibbons v. Ogden, in which Congress was confirmed control of interstate commerce under the commerce clause instead of the states, and Marbury v. Madison, which broadly expanded the power of the national government.
Dred Scott v. Sanford was an example of how Taney's dual federalism helped stir up tensions eventually leading to the outbreak of the Civil War.
Political scientist Theodore J. Lowi summarized the system in place during those years in The End of the Republican Era[23] This lack of change is nowhere more apparent than in Supreme Court rulings that addressed federalism against the backdrop of the laissez-faire, pro-business Gilded Age.
Knight Co. (1895), the Supreme Court continued along the path of promoting dual federalism in striking down a provision of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
[21] Despite the Supreme Court’s stubbornness on guarding states’ rights, much of the modern federal apparatus owes its origins to changes that occurred during the period between 1861 and 1933.
On several occasions during the 1880s, one house of Congress or the other passed bills providing land sale revenues to the states for the purpose of aiding primary schools.
During the first years of the twentieth century, the endeavors funded with federal grants multiplied, and Congress began using general revenues to fund them—thus utilizing the general welfare clause's broad spending power, even though it had been discredited for almost a century (Hamilton's view that a broad spending power could be derived from the clause had been all but abandoned by 1840).
Disaster relief for areas affected by floods or crop failures dated from 1874, and these appropriations began to multiply during the administration of Woodrow Wilson (1913–21).
By 1933, the precedents necessary for the federal government to exercise broad regulatory power over all economic activity and spend for any purpose it saw fit were almost all in place.
[29] New Federalism, which is characterized by a gradual return of power to the states, was initiated by President Ronald Reagan (1981–89) with his "devolution revolution" in the early 1980s and lasted until 2001.
Reagan's administration, however, introduced a practice of giving block grants, freeing state governments to spend the money at their own discretion.
SAMTA argued that they did not because the money received was to be used at their own discretion and did not need to abide by federal statutes because they are locally operated and make decisions about the transit system.
In a 2009 Rockefeller Institute report by Martha Derthick, she argues that "the normal tendency of federal-state relations in the United States is toward centralization.
This act placed a federal focus on providing stabilizing state and local budgets, financial bailouts, and ensuring jobs were secure.
[34][35] ARRA was seen as a significant exertion of federal power which many conservatives criticized—however, this was through a coalition that included state governments as very active participants who worked closely in drafting and implementation.
[32] The cannabis policy of the Barack Obama administration was an easing of federal enforcement, granting more rights to the states in determining the legality of marijuana.
[39] Goelzhauser and Konisky state that punitive federalism is exemplified most by the Trump administration's interference with California through the EPA in 2018, and the withholding of disaster relief from Puerto Rico.
However, "the forces of federalism, especially state attorneys general, governors, and legislatures, have often undercut Trump’s executive initiatives and reduced their impact".