Chapter 4- American Government

Amendment-Enforcing Provisions

Provisions of six constitutional amendments (13th, 14th, 15th, nineteenth, 23rd, and 26th) that grant Congress authority (with appropriate legislation) to enforce the rights guaranteed by the amendments. With the Necessary and Proper Clause, these amendment-enforcing provisions are the major sources of the federal government’s implied powers.

Birthright Citizenship Clause

First clause of the 14thAmendment, which establishes the constitutional rule that every person (regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, etc.) born in the United States is, by right of birth, a citizen of the United States. This clause was adopted to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s white supremacist claim in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) that only white persons can be legal citizens of the United States.

Block Grant

A type of federal grant-in-aid that specifies a general purpose but gives state or local governments a lot of freedom in deciding how to spend the money to achieve that purpose.

Categorical Grant

A type of federal grant-in-aid that provides relatively strict and specific guidelines on how the state or local government receiving the money must spend it.

Coercive Federalism

A form of federalism in which the federal government forces states to implement policies instead of working alongside them as a co-equal partner.

Commerce Clause

Enumerated power in Article I, Section 8 that says “Congress shall have power … to regulate Commerce … among the several States…”

Concurrent Authority

Area of public policy over which both state governments and the national government have authority.

Confederacy (or Confederal form of Government)

A system with a central government and state governments that is set up so that the states maintain as much autonomy and independence from the central government as possible. Most importantly, the central government only claims authority over state governments (i.e., is “a government over governments”) rather than over individual persons, and this is the leading cause of the central government’s weakness.

Cooperative Federalism

Form of federalism, sometimes called Marble Cake Federalism, in which federal and state governments cooperate and their roles and functions are intermingled.

Court-Packing Plan

Name given to FDR’s proposal in 1937 to add new seats to the Supreme Court so that he could appoint justices who consistently voted to declare New Deal programs constitutional.

Devolution

The process of the federal government returning functions and powers to state and local governments.

Dual Federalism

Form of federalism, sometimes called Layer Cake Federalism, marked by a clear and distinct division of authority and responsibility between the federal and state governments.

Dillon’s Rule

Principle of American federalism that holds municipal (i.e., city, town, county) governments are legally subordinate to the will of state legislatures.

Enumerated Powers

Specific legislative powers explicitly granted to Congress in the U.S. Constitution. Most of these enumerated powers are located in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Federalism (or Federal System)

Principle of government that means authority is partly divided and partly shared between a central government and member state governments. A federal system combines some elements of confederacies and unitary national governments in an effort to enjoy the benefits of each while avoiding their respective shortcomings. Unlike in a confederacy, but like in a unitary national government, the central government in a federal system claims direct authority over individual persons. Also unlike in a confederacy, the central government in a federal system is not tightly controlled by member state governments. On the other hand, unlike in a unitary national government, the central government in a federal system does not have unilateral authority to alter the legal powers or geographic jurisdiction of member state governments.

General Revenue Training

Spending reform measure enacted by President Richard Nixon that involved distributing billions of dollars in block grants to state and local governments, which were free to spend the funds for almost any use.

Great Society

President Lyndon Johnson’s ambitious public policy agenda that sought to wage a war on poverty by providing job training and direct income support to the poor; improve access to quality education, medical care, and transportation for lower-income Americans; provide funds for legal services for the poor; promote racial equality; protect consumers and the environment; and promote the arts.

Grants-in-Aid

Grants of money or land provided by the federal government to state and/or local governments on the condition that the funds be used for purposes defined by the federal government. Two major types of grants-in-aid are called categorical grants and block grants.

Implied Powers

Powers not explicitly granted to Congress but rather are implied by the letter and spirit of the text of the Constitution. The primary source of Congress’ implied powers is the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Independent Regulatory Agency

Agency of the federal government designed to be insulated from political pressure.

Laboratories of Democracy

Phrase that refers to the argument, most famously made by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, that an advantage of federalism is that it promotes progress toward discovery of better approaches to public policy by allowing states to conduct their own policy experiments without jeopardizing the rest of the country.

Layer Cake Federalism

Metaphorical nickname for Dual Federalism.

Marble Cake Federalism

Metaphorical nickname for Cooperative Federalism.

New Deal

Name for the far-reaching set of policies pursued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his fellow Democrats in Congress during the Great Depression that revolutionized the role of the federal government in the American economy. The policies aimed at providing immediate relief for those suffering from the Depression, stimulating economic recovery, and reforming the economic regulatory system so that another Depression would not occur in the future.

Police Power

Authority of government to make laws and regulations in order to promote the health, safety, welfare, and morals of the people. In the United States, it is understood that the police power is reserved to state governments.

Principled Federalism

A preference for a particular allocation of authority between the national and state governments that one consistently adheres to even if one dislikes the policy outcomes that will likely result from that allocation. For example, a principled commitment to states’ rights would lead one to favor state authority even when one expects most states to enact policies one strongly disapproves of.

Race to the Bottom

When economic competition between states leads them to enact socially suboptimal regulations to attract or retain large businesses and the jobs they provide.

Reconstruction Amendments

Three amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th) to the U.S. Constitution passed during the Reconstruction Era. These amendments made such a dramatic transformation of the Founders’ Constitution that their ratification is sometimes aptly referred to as America’s Second Founding.

Reconstruction

A brief period (~1865–1877) in the wake of the Civil War in which the federal government, led by Radical Republicans in Congress, worked to abolish slavery and secure the rights of formers slaves and the descendants.

Reserved Powers

Areas of public policy over which only state governments have authority.

Special Revenue Sharing

Spending reform measure enacted by President Richard Nixon that involved consolidating over 100 separate categorical grants into six broad purpose block grants and allowing states to choose how to allocate funds for each grant’s purpose.

Substantial Effects Doctrine

Name for the Supreme Court’s approach to interpreting Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause ever since 1937. According to this doctrine, if an economic activity has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, then Congress may regulate it under the authority of the Commerce Clause.

Tenth Amendment

A provision in the U.S. Constitution that establishes (1) the authority of the federal government is limited to only those legal powers that are delegated to it by the U.S. Constitution and (2) unless the U.S. Constitution (or a state’s constitution) prohibits a state from exercising a particular power, the state government is presumed to have authority to exercise that power.

Threat of Exit

Power exercised by threatening to relocate to a different place. This is a power wielded by consumers in a market and can also be a power exerted by citizens and (especially) large business corporations over governments. One argument for the national government regulating the economy rests on the concern that the threat of exit by large business corporations creates a race to the bottom when state governments try to regulate them on their own.

Unfunded Mandates

Federal regulatory or spending requirements placed on states that states need to pay for with their own funds.

Unitary National Government

A country with a supreme central government that either is the only government or does not share authority with lower (e.g., state) governments. In a unitary national government with member states, the central government can unilaterally alter the authority and geographic boundaries of member states.