FEDERALISM Explained [AP Government Review]

hi and welcome back to hammers history US government edition now in this video we're gonna talk about federalism and if there's one idea that confuses students of US government more than any other idea it's this one the thing is it's not even that it's that hard to understand it's just that the word federalism is very confusing but if you confuse the meaning of federalism you miss out on one of the most fundamental concepts of how our government works how about I split it up real nice for you with some jelly on the side so what is federalism and why does it matter well I need to begin by telling you that federalism is not what it sounds like it sounds like we're talking about the federal government which is to say Big Daddy government who lives in Washington DC so when you go to a party and you get into a conversation you say you're studying federalism in school which in my opinion is pretty solid party talk but the other person is probably thinking is all you're learning about the president in the Supreme Court and the Congress which is to say the federal government but hear me that is not what we are talking about when we talk about federalism does federalism mean we're talking about the federal government how many ways can I say no if I were german I'd say nein if I were South African I'd say me if I were an ancient Roman I'd say many may know federalism does not mean we're talking about the federal government so what does it mean federalism is pure and simple about the separation of power under our particular form of government it is the people who have the power and we have consented to giving some of that power to the governments so if the framers of the Constitution decided to take all of that power and jam it into one power sandwich we'd have what's called a unitary government there would be one centralized government with one ring to rule them all but the framers did not do that they decided to cut that sandwich in two and that cutting is called federalism they gave some power to the central government and gave some power to the state's government and that's all federalism means in our government power is divided between the state governments and the national government so what that means in practice is that national governments and state governments are somewhat independent of one when it comes to power but there's also some overlapping areas of concern when it comes to power for example the national government is responsible for foreign policy in the state government is responsible for keeping people safe through a police force and in that way the federal government and state governments are largely independent of one another an example of how these entities share power is the interstate highway system on these roads you can travel from state to state and both the federal government and state governments share responsibility for them and I can give you a thousand other examples but the main point here is that the Constitution made sure may be absolute sure that power was separated between the national government and the state government so let's look more closely at how it does that on an initial reading of the Constitution it may seem like if there was a stronger central government at the expense of state government you might be convinced of that by article 1 which gives all the powers that Congress has and the list is pretty long but when the Constitution talks about state power the list is relatively short but the Constitution actually does grant the states substantial power for example the Tenth Amendment is the Haven of state sovereignty and it reads like this the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the States respectively or to the people but if we look at article 4 of the Constitution we can see power shifting more towards the central government for example we have the Full Faith and Credit Clause which says that states must respect the laws of other states that's pretty nice because it means that I can get into my car here in Georgia drive clear across the country to California and I don't have to stop at every state and get a new drivers license because in each state they will honor my Georgia's driver's license as valid and another key part of the Constitution for understanding federalism is the 14th amendment it reads this way no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States nor shall any state deprive any person of life liberty or property without due process of law nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws now this amendment was passed in the wake of the Civil War and those meant to give the federal government power to nullify discriminatory state laws for example after the Civil War southerners were fond of giving literacy tests meant to bar former slaves from voting but the 14th amendment can also work the other way around for example in 2013 the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act and they justified this by saying that the federal government had place too heavy a burden on the states okay so that's a brief explanation of how federalism work and as you can imagine the line between where state sovereignty and where national sovereignty both begin and end has always been about and so it's helpful to see how federalism has evolved over the history of our country so the first real challenge to our federalist system came in 1819 in a Supreme Court case called McCulloch versus Maryland back in those days Congress established a branch of the National Bank in the state of Maryland now in case you forgot your US history many states in those days despised the establishment of a National Bank so what Maryland decided to do when Congress put a branch of the National Bank in their state was to pass a law that said any bank in that state that was not chartered by the state of Maryland was subject to a hefty annual tax when the federal government told Maryland to stop it they found themselves before Chief Justice John Marshall in the Supreme Court essentially Marshall ruled that since the Constitution explicitly gives the federal government the right to coin and regulate money it also had the right to establish a National Bank to handle that money under the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution and furthermore once this ruling was handed down the Supremacy Clause ensured that the decision for the federal government's law would trump that of the state governments laws now since that time different models of federalism have come and gone up till about 1930 which basically operated under a system called dual federalism and that just basically meant that the national government and the state government operated largely independently of another with just a little bit overlap in the middle this is also known as layer-cake federalism because when you cut a layer cake you can see that each layer is its own distinct and sovereign layer and yes they both mush together in the middle with that icing but mainly they are separate entities and then after the 1930s especially with the implementation of Roosevelt's New Deal we moved more into what's called a marble cake federalism in this kind of federalism the federal government becomes much more hands-on in areas which previously were solely the domain of States so for example with the rollout of all the New Deal programs the federal government provided the money for many of those programs but the states were responsible for making things happen it's not nearly as clean as a layer cake you've got power bleeding across the boundaries in both directions since that time federalism most further evolved into what we have to namely fiscal federalism basically what that means is that today federalism basically operates in terms of money the federal government provides huge sums of money to States for various programs but with every check they write to the states there are strings attached and requirements by which the states must abide if they want the funds so for example in the 1970s the federal government offered money to the states for highway or repair but in exchange the states had to agree to set speed limits on those highways to 55 miles an hour now let's take a little further into this idea of fiscal federalism because you hear about it in the news all the time even if you don't know that's what they're talking about today most of the federal money comes to the states in two forms categorical grants and block grants a categorical grant is federal money that must be attached to a specific category of spending like a school lunch program but the tricky thing about these is that the federal government can act in coercive ways when giving out these grants for example requiring a state to set the drinking age to 21 before giving it funds for highway repair but block grants are a little less heavy-handed the federal government gives states block grants that must be used within a specific policy area like say healthcare and then lets the state decide how they're going to spend that money within the bounds of that area I'm not just trying to throw vocabulary at you these kinds of grants actually illustrate how federalism works today the reason why the federal government does this is because normally the states wouldn't have access to all that extra money and that's a win for the States but in putting conditions I'm accepting that money the national government win because then it can implement its national policies which the states otherwise would not implement and that's a very good thing so that's how federalism works and that's why it's important now I don't know about you but I'm gonna go find me a cake all right thanks for watching if you learned anything at all there's a little thumbs up below click that and that will 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Channel: Heimler's History

Views: 17,840

Rating: 4.944056 out of 5

Keywords: Federalism, Federalism defintion, Federalism government, Federalism examples, Federalism crash course, Federalism class 10 cbse, Federalism explained, Federalism ap gov, Mcculloch v maryland, John Marshall, 10th amendment, 10th amendment explained, 14th amendment, 14th amendment explained, Supremacy clause, Necessary and proper clause, States rights, ap gov, ap government

Id: mNtWTdQbrng

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 19 2019