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The past two decades have witnessed an increasing interest in the topic of federalism. Federalism has become a significant focus of discussion in political, public policy, and academic debates. The growing importance of federalism represents an important shift from the preceding decades. In the United States, federalism had been one of the most central issues in constitutional law since the Founding. By the 1970s, however, federalism appeared to be primarily of historical interest. The Civil Rights movement, along with the Warren Court's invigoration of individual rights, shifted the focus of constitutional discussion away from the states and toward the federal government.
The message of Brown v. Board of Education1 and other landmark cases, such as Gideon v. Wainwrighf2 and Miranda v. Arizona,3 was that a strong national government was required to protect people from the states. The idea of allocating authority between the states and the national government, with the attendant limitation on federal authority, seemed odd, even perverse. A central mission of the national government was to protect individuals from their states. In this climate, federalism often seemed an obstacle to the achievement of important constitutional goals. Writing in 1964, political scientist William Riker exemplified this attitude when he declared that "if in the United States one disapproves of racism, one should disapprove of federalism."4
Federalism, however, began to come back into the constitutional fold. In 1980, Ronald Reagan capitalized on the resentment against strong national government. His antigovernment message corresponded to federalism's longstanding concerns with the oppressive potential of centralized power. The judges that he, and his Vice President and successor George H.W. Bush, placed on the federal courts developed a jurisprudence of federalism to counter the regnant, more nationalist jurisprudence of the Warren and Burger Courts. When the Reagan and Bush Justices finally attained a majority, they placed new limits on the power of the national government.
In a series of decisions, the Rehnquist Court overruled or narrowly interpreted recent cases so as to cabin the authority of the federal government. In New York v. United States in 1992, the Court struck down a federal statute on the grounds that it commandeered the legislative apparatus of the state.5 This ruling created considerable tension with the 1985 decision hi Garcia v. San...