Paper 3 USA · The Federal Government

Federalism in the United States · Notes

Sub-topic lookup view of the walk-through.

About these notes. This is the sub-topic lookup version. For the full narrative lesson with the eras and cases, use the Walk-through. For active recall, use the MCQ Quiz. To practise the judgement, use the interactive judgement grid.

Likely exam angles. The 30-mark question tests three comparative dimensions: federal versus state on a policy, one era against another, or the laboratory case against the patchwork case. The deeper modern theme is how polarisation has weaponised the federal-state divide.

1. What federalism is - and what it is not

Federalism is the constitutional division of power between a national government and sub-national governments, each with its own areas of competence, and neither able to abolish the other. The US is the classic federal system; Germany, Canada, Australia, India and Brazil are also federal. The UK is not - Westminster could in principle abolish the Scottish Parliament, so devolution operates inside parliamentary sovereignty rather than as true federalism.

The three textual anchors

Article 1 Section 8 lists the enumerated powers of Congress (regulate interstate commerce, declare war, coin money, raise armies and so on).
The Necessary and Proper clause (the elastic clause) lets Congress make laws needed to execute those powers - the textual basis for federal expansion.
The 10th Amendment (1791) reserves to the states any power not delegated to the federal government - the textual basis for state authority.

The bit students miss. Federalism is not the same as 'the federal government has lots of power'. It is the architecture of divided sovereignty. The interesting questions are about how the line moves - what the federal government can claim under the elastic clause, what the states can claim under the 10th Amendment, and how the Supreme Court settles the boundary when they collide.

2. Four eras of American federalism

Era	Image and mechanism	Markers
Dual 1789-1933	Layer cake - separate federal and state spheres.	Civil War 1861-65 and the 13th/14th/15th Amendments the great shift; the Court enforced commerce-clause limits.
Cooperative 1933-1968	Marble cake - federal funding for state implementation; grants-in-aid the mechanism.	New Deal, Social Security Act 1935, Civil Rights Act 1964, Medicare 1965; Wickard v Filburn (1942) ratified the shift.
New federalism 1968-2008	Devolution - block grants and 'returning power to the states'.	Nixon block grants, Reagan rhetoric, Clinton welfare reform 1996; US v Lopez (1995) and Morrison (2000) limited the commerce clause.
Coercive 2008-present	Federal pressure - mandates, preemption and conditional grants.	ACA 2010 and NFIB v Sebelius (2012); Trump 2 (2025) tied schools funding to anti-DEI compliance and threatened sanctuary cities.

The pattern. Crisis (Civil War, Depression, COVID, climate) drives federal expansion; reaction drives devolution; polarisation drives simultaneous expansion and resistance - the federal government claims more while the opposing party's states resist harder. The Trump 2 era is the contemporary peak of that dynamic.

3. Five Supreme Court cases that move the line

Case	What it did
McCulloch v Maryland 1819	Marshall Court ruling: the federal government has implied powers under the Necessary and Proper clause, and federal law is supreme in the federal sphere. The foundation of every later federal-expansion case.
Wickard v Filburn 1942	Peak commerce-clause expansion: even a farmer's wheat grown for personal use could be regulated because it affected aggregate interstate commerce. The legal basis of the cooperative-federalism state.
US v Lopez 1995	Rehnquist Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act - the first commerce-clause limit since 1937. Signalled the Court would now police the federal-state boundary. Morrison (2000) followed.
NFIB v Sebelius 2012	The ACA case: the individual mandate was upheld as a tax, but the Medicaid expansion was ruled coercive and unconstitutional - states must be free to refuse. The key case on the limits of federal coercion.
Dobbs v Jackson 2022	Overturned Roe v Wade and returned abortion to the states under the 10th Amendment. The most consequential single act of federalism in modern times.

The cases as a system. McCulloch established federal supremacy; Wickard expanded the federal sphere to almost anything economic; Lopez began the modern push-back; NFIB limited federal coercion of states; Dobbs sent abortion back to the states. Naming three or four with dates puts an answer in the top band.

4. Contemporary tensions - federalism live in 2025

Abortion post-Dobbs: legal in California and New York, near-total bans in Texas and Alabama, partial restrictions in many more - the textbook live federalism case. Moyle v United States (2024) tested medical-emergency care.
Sanctuary cities: states and cities can refuse to help federal immigration enforcement. Trump 2 (Jan 2025) threatened to withhold grants; the anti-commandeering doctrine from Printz v US (1997) says the federal government cannot force state police to do federal work.
Gun rights: McDonald v Chicago (2010) and New York Rifle and Pistol v Bruen (2022) increasingly let the federal Constitution preempt strict state gun laws.
Marijuana: illegal federally but legal for recreational use in 24 states and DC - a live demonstration of federalism producing simultaneous legal and illegal status for the same activity.
Trump 2 coercion (2025): the Department of Education ordered dismantled, K-12 funding tied to anti-DEI compliance, sanctuary funding threatened - using the spending power, met by hundreds of Democratic-state injunctions.

What 2025 shows. Federalism is now the front line of partisan politics. Democratic states resist a Republican federal government and vice versa. The framers expected disagreements over substantive policy, not the systematic resistance of half the states to the other party's federal government. Polarisation has weaponised federalism.

5. Strengths and weaknesses of American federalism

The defenders' case

Laboratories of democracy: Brandeis's 1932 phrase - states experiment before policies go national. Massachusetts piloted health reform before the ACA; Colorado legalised marijuana before two dozen more states followed.
Accommodating diversity: a single policy across 330 million people in fifty very different states would fit none of them; federalism lets Wyoming and New York City differ. Liberals rely on it too - California sets its own climate rules.
Dispersing power: the framers' core defence - even a hostile federal government cannot accumulate all power; states can preserve rights and resist.

The critics' case

Rights by zip code: after Dobbs, whether you can have an abortion, carry a firearm or possess marijuana depends on your state. Equal protection is promised but federalism enforces inequality by geography.
An alibi for injustice: 'leave it to the states' historically meant leaving Black Americans to the segregationist South; the Civil Rights Movement was a fight for federal intervention. Shelby County v Holder (2013) returned voting enforcement to the states.
Race to the bottom: states compete by cutting taxes, regulation and welfare - Delaware on corporate law, Texas on tax, Mississippi on benefits. The federal floor is what stops it going lower.

The verdict to take in. Federalism is genuinely both - the laboratory and the patchwork, the safeguard and the alibi. The balance depends on which side of the line your rights fall, and whether your state's politics align with the federal government's. Hold both and judge which dimension dominates now.

6. Exam method - the 30-marker

Every question is comparative: federal versus state on a policy, one era against another, or the laboratory case against the patchwork case. 'Decisively', 'remains' and 'most important' all force the judgement.
Argue bidirectionally. The strongest line is that the trajectory is not one-way: federal assertion under Trump 2 is met by judicial limits (NFIB, Dobbs) and organised state resistance.
Name and date the cases: McCulloch 1819, Wickard 1942, Lopez 1995, NFIB 2012, Dobbs 2022, plus Printz 1997 on anti-commandeering.
Reach the polarisation point. The deepest reading is that polarisation, not centralisation, drives modern federalism - the architecture has not shifted, the political use of it has.

The verdict that travels. Contemporary federalism is more contested and more politicised than at any time since Reconstruction, but the balance has not decisively shifted in either direction - what has shifted is the temperature. A worked essay is at the end of the walk-through.

📜 Walk-throughThe full narrative lesson with the four eras, the five cases and the worked essay. 🧠 MCQ quiz15 questions across the design, eras, cases and 2025 tensions. 📊 Judgement gridPredict and check where the federal-state line has moved, then test yourself.