Introduction

Summary

As Americans have monitored federalism, they struggled with how a government based on sovereignty divided between nation and states might function. The Constitution’s shared sovereignty created an inherently dynamic federalism with almost continuous debates over the balance of power, making this testing of the balance of federalism and monitoring government central to the American constitutional order. Many constitutional debates involved the protection of slavery, yet other interests including debt, taxation, and police powers also played vital roles in shaping American federalism. State resistance to the national government utilizing the constitutional tool of interposition arose when the disequilibrium of federalism was most keenly felt and states needed to resist perceived constitutional overreaching by the national government. This state legislative resistance shaped the broader American political conversation about constitutional rights and jurisdiction and this debate over federalism is arguably a strength and not a weakness of the framers’ constitutional design,inviting each generation to determine what the appropriate constitutional balance should be.