Dua Dual Federalism

After 13 colonies gained independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776, Article of Confederation became their first government, where the federal government was too weak to enforce laws and sovereignty reside to states. It was then replaced by the U.S. Constitution. The authors of the Constitution desire a stronger national government and dual sovereignty and “argued that the best way of preserving liberty was divide power. If power is concentrated in any one place it can be used to crush individual liberty.” On the other hand, the antifederalists favored state government and limited national authorities. Since then many political conflicts were marked by the nature of American federalism. Federalism is the idea that the power is divided between the national government and state government. It has impacted and shaped American’s government and constantly evolve over time. There are three forms of American federalism in the construction of the United States Constitution: dual federalism, functional federalism, and new federalism.

Constitution was created in 1789 and lasted for about 150 years until the 1930s. Dual federalism is also known as ‘layer cake federalism’ and ‘dual sovereignty’ where there is a clear division of power between the national government and states government. Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution listed the enumerated powers given to the Congress including the power to tax, coin money, make laws that are necessary and proper, which is referred as the elastic clause. In addition, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution reserves power for the state government and reject the flexibility of the elastic clause. This prohibited the national government to interfere with States’ issues. Due to this dual federalism promote states to compete with each other which cause tension between