Ernie Law Zink 3° US History 15 September 2016 DBQ Essay When the delegates met in 1787 they aimed to fix the national government. The previous governmental charter, the Articles of Confederation, failed because it was just too weak and wasn’t getting the job done. Under the Articles of Confederation, there was no court system, no chief executive, and there was no particular way for the central government to force states to pay their taxes. By creating the Constitution, it would build a stronger central government and would be able to hold the nation together.
This specific system of government is described by the 21st Century American Government and Politics textbook as, “The allocation of powers and responsibilities among national, state, and local governments and the intergovernmental relations between them.” When deciding whether the Framers intended for federal or state governments to be supreme in the federal system, a divided answer among the Founders surfaces. If one was to present this question to Alexander Hamilton and his fellow Federalists, he would undoubtedly express his support for a strong federal government. Conversely, Thomas Jefferson and the anti-federalists were in favor of state government supremacy in the federal system and even resented the ratification of the Constitution.
Throughout history federalism has gone through several substantial changes, such as the boundaries and balances between the state and national government. Due to this we have experienced several different era’s of federalism from the original “dual-federalism” to the “new federalism” and just about everything else in between. Dual-federalism also known as divided sovereignty was a optimistic belief that federal and state government could exist if their was a clear division between authority. The problem with this is that there was a clever mechanism in the constitution that reserved a powers clause in favor of the national government. Such cases held in Marshall court favored the national government “McCulloch v. Maryland(1819)”, “Gibbons
The United States has undergone a major shift in federalism since the founding in 1789. Dual federalism was the norm from 1789 until the 1930’s. Under this system of federalism the areas of responsibilities that the National government and State government had were demarcated very distinctly. Most areas in citizen’s everyday lives were in fact regulated by the state and local governments. While the national government had responsibilities that were mostly concern with national commerce.
Around this era of the late 1700’s, the citizens of the newly independent nation of “America” were in the process of ratifying their government from the Articles of Confederation to the current Constitution which allowed for a democratic republic. The people in support of this ratification were the “Federalist” whom often used pamphlet writings known as the “Federalist Papers” to persuade and inform the public of their ideas and Constitution ratification. The most influential paper among the 85, is the Federalist paper #10 that disproves the Antifederalists’ argument that a republic of any kind would fall from the pressure of multiple divisive opinions among its citizens. Given the nature of humans by God, creating factions based on similar
After all the challenges the United States faced in making the Constitution, our Founding Fathers had to revise the “rough draft” called, The Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation weren’t sufficient to make this country succeed, therefore we created a new Constitution. The Constitution was written in May of 1887 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Our new Constitution made it possible for us to become a country based on Federalism, or a compound government and not result in tyranny. What is tyranny?
Federalism is an important part of the way our government runs. Federalism is the system in which power is divided between two levels of government, national and state. This dual system was created for one important reason; so no one government holds more power in hopes to preserve liberty. Each level has its own role, the national level authorizes certain areas of governance while the state level has power with prospective jurisdiction. “The united states established the first federal system, and about two dozen countries today have one.
The Constitution uses division of powers in order to prevent tyranny from occurring. James Madison, a man who was very dedicated towards our Constitution, decided upon dividing the government into two different sections, state and central, this idea is known as federalism. Powers needed to run a country are granted to the central governments, a few of those powers are printing and coin money, declare war, and regulate trade, and powers given to the state governments are the ability to hold elections, establish schools, and set up local governments. ( Document A ). The idea of federalism is important because it has a major effect on the prevention tyranny.
The Federalists fought for stability and safety supplied by a strong national government. This excluded including the Bill of Rights, which were unnecessary and dangerous with the restrictions put on people’s freedoms and rights. The advantage of federalism was that it prevented the government from becoming too powerful since there was a dispersal of power from the national government to the state. This would help the people have a voice through their states and bring unity. If the system were to stay the same there would be mayhem and violence among the states.
This country was founded with the attempt to separate the federal government and the state government, known as federalism. The goal of federalism is to divide the power of state and federal governments, protect the rights of the state, and prevent tyranny of the majority. Throughout the years, federalism turned into dual federalism where the state and federal government were completely independent of each other and only shared a dependency on the Constitution. The united states suppressing now to cooperative federalism, the national government has assumed even more power, overruling the states with Supreme Court decisions and actions, and executive Orders. Furthermore, the Federal government should grant their state governments more power, due to the connection the state governments hold with their local people.
Federalism in the United States, because we are a federal system which has state level governments who have responsibilities to its citizens and a separate national level government with a different set of responsibilities for the same citizens I think it can be hard to balance the powers. An example of this would be gay and lesbian marriages in Texas, initially this type of union was not legal, as a result of an law suit which filed and over turned by the higher government it is now a legal union in the state. This is actually conflicting with other Texas laws such as the sodomy law which criminalizes sexual activities between the same sex. Another example would be the issue of transgender rights in using communal restrooms.
An Overview on Federalism Through the PH Debate Context The problem with concepts in political science like federalism is it’s taken for granted. When advocates and critics debate the pros and cons of federalism in the country, it seems as if it’s a straightforward issue and idea, devoid of nuances. Indeed, the need for clarification and understanding of the concept is important to raise the level of its discussion in our society. Paleker provided a conceptual analysis of federalism by delineating and integrating three theories seeking to explain it (309).
What is the government and how is it supposed to work? Is the government for the safety of the country and the people? When putting one mind to govern all, the person is not speaking for all. That is why representation is important, that is why having more than one person in absolute power is going to be the best way to run things. This is why federalism is the best choice of system when it comes to governing something.
“We the People” these three seemingly small, insignificant words have held significant meaning for American citizens since 1789, when the Constitution was ratified, but in drastically different ways. The American way of life has expanded in some ways but has been minimized in others. After the United States won their independence from Great Britain, a unitary government, one of the first things we did was establish a government (Ginsberg, Benjamin, et al. 35). Our first Constitution was not the one we live by today, but the Articles of Confederation. This constitution was made with its sole purpose to ensure that the national government would never again have as many powers over the people as Great Britain had over them.
Federalism Federalism is a system of government in which power is divided between federal government, state government and provinces government. While federalism has many benefits, among them is checks and balances between the federal and state government, thus reducing the chances of one party getting too powerful and abusing their power. Preventing one party from being too powerful and abusing their powers is a good thing. However, it comes with a price that federal and provinces (state and local) governments do not always see eye to eye and agree with each other, which turns into conflict.
