Constitution Hall Pass: Federalism

0:00welcome to Constitution Hall Pass I'm Bi Jean No here at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia today we are looking at federalism one of the most important parts of our constitutional system of government maybe you've heard that word before so what does it mean and where does it come from federalism is the system of dividing power in this country between different levels of government the national level a state level and the local level this division of power in our government is spelled out from the United States Constitution it was created to strike a balance between a national government that could take care of matters that affect the whole country and state and local governments that can better carry out the wills and wishes

1:00of the people striking bad balance was one of the biggest challenges the founding fathers faced when they met at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia back in 1787 so in this episode we'll see why the Constitutional Convention settled on federalism as a way to take care of our country's diverse needs we'll explore examples of how different levels of government have different responsibilities we'll even look at a couple moments from history in which federalism played a part in protecting individual rights so let's get started let's go back to the beginning and look at the time period just after we won our independence from Great Britain at that point our governmental structure was outlined in a document called the Articles of Confederation which was

1:46written during the Revolutionary War under the Articles the national government was very weak and most of the power belonged to the States this was originally how the founding fathers wanted it remember before the Revolution the colonies were ruled by the British so the main government where most important decisions were made was located all the way back in England with no representatives from the colonies that was really far away from the people here in America who felt that the great distance and lack of representation meant that they didn't have any say in how things were run in the colonies the founding fathers didn't want the same problem to occur in our new independent country they knew that the 13th states were all very different from one another and they wanted

2:32to make sure that the state governments which were closer to their people would have a lot of say and how things went but under the Articles of Confederation the national government was so weak that it couldn't even handle basic things like collecting taxes raising troops or stopping the states from signing their own treaties with other nations the states were acting more like 13 separate countries they were too busy bickering with one another to support the federal government and as a result foreign powers like Britain and Spain were waiting for the new country to fall apart recognising these issues the founders called a convention in Philadelphia back in 1787 led by people like James Wilson governor Morris and James Madison the convention sought

3:17to strike the right balance for our government we needed to strengthen the national government but still leave enough authority with the individual states so that the people would not become too disconnected from the bodies that governed their day-to-day lives it took them four long months but the convention delegates ended up creating a new system of government for a young country under the Constitution the system they came up with didn't look like any other government at that time it divided power among national state and local authorities in order to strike a balance between protecting citizens rights preserving state authority and empowering the national government to hold the country together that system of dividing power among those levels

4:01of government is called federalism so let's take a look at how federalism works under federalism there are three levels of government in the United States the national government state governments and local governments at the national level the government has three branches the legislative branch and makes laws the executive branch which makes sure that laws are carried out and the judicial branch responsible for interpreting laws the national governments powers generally deal with the big picture stuff that affects the entire country for example only the national government has the power to sign treaties print or coin money establish a system of weights and measures and declare war on other nations the next level down from the national government is

4:52made up of the states each state has its own government also with the same three branches state governments have a lot of responsibility too for example states get to set standards for educating students and they determine how old you have to be to get a driver's license among many other things this way states are able to make laws and establish policies that meet their own values and preferences the things they'd like to see get done as the founding fathers knew our states can differ quite a bit from one another they have different economies different climates even different histories so it's good that they can make laws that meet those values and preferences then there's another level beneath the state governments within each state there are

5:39also local government bodies like county boards and sheriffs city councils town mayors and school board's these local government bodies take care of the values and preferences of their own individual communities through things like policing littering ordinances and land zoning because our state governments have a pretty broad range of authority to make laws something interesting happens sometimes in 1932 Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis called the state's laboratories of democracy but he said that he meant that the state governments often lead the way and trying out new laws and policies when those ideas work out well they can spread to other states and even bubble up to the national level changing the way things work all across the country so ideas that are

6:28tested out as state laws sometimes lead to larger changes in how our country works as a whole but not all federal laws bubble up from the states the same thing can happen in the opposite direction too sometimes the national government decides to address the needs of its citizens by passing laws that affect all 50 states this happens when the national government sees that states are making laws that are unjust or restricting people's rights so it passes new laws that apply to the entire country and individual states must comply this trickles down and can mean big changes for individual citizens in their own communities the national government can only act in areas where it's empowered under the Constitution but there's plenty of examples from history that show

7:17us how that works the laws that came out of the civil rights movement are a really great example of this in the years after the Civil War and reconstruction many states passed laws that restricted the rights of African Americans to own property to be treated as equal citizens and to vote rights that were supposed to be guaranteed under the 14th and 15th amendments so many people from all backgrounds protested against this kind of treatment and when the national government heard those voices protesting it decided that the bad treatment had to stop so in response the national government passed laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protecting those citizens from the state laws that harmed them [Music] other times

8:08it's the state governments that lead the way when they act like laboratories of democracy to test out new ideas for example here's a question when did women get the right to vote I bet you might have said 1920 because that was when the 19th amendment to the Constitution was ratified that amendment guarantees that no woman can be denied the right to vote just because of her gender but several states had actually extended voting rights to women decades before that Wyoming which was the first state to guarantee women's voting rights did it all the way back in 1869 while it was still a territory and before it even became a state states like Wyoming made the decision to test out the idea of women's suffrage just like a scientist tests out a hypothesis in

8:53a laboratory by 1920 41 out of the 48 states had already allowed women to vote and at least some elections and 14 of those states had granted women full suffrage so when the states then ratified a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women full suffrage nationwide they were going off of the success of an idea that had already been tested in those state laboratories so federalism allows both state and national government to influence each other that's a quick look at how federalism works it came from the need to balance national and state power in the Constitution and it's continued to shape our government in all the years since then if you'd like to learn more about federalism and other constitutional topics you can download our interactive constitution app

9:43or visit our website at Constitution Center org from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia I'm Beach ano thanks for watching see you next time on Constitution Hall Pass [Music] you [Music]