Federalism in the United States

Paper Summary:

The history of federalism in the U.S. has been one in which the struggle or conflict between the central government and the states has continued to this day. The paper shows that the central concern of the 2000 Presidential election was how much power the federal government should have in relation to the states and individuals--with respect to taxation, abortion, education, health care and so on. Clearly, the contentious debate over federalism is as alive today as it was over 200 years ago at the founding of the nation. The paper explains that the purpose of federalism was to maintain a central government which was strong enough to keep the states together, to provide security for those states and through those states and yet to be restricted from gathering too much power unto itself which would lead to the kind of tyranny the colonists had just thrown off through the Revolutionary War.

From the Paper:

"The inclusion of the Bill of Rights was one of the first essential compromises on the part of the Federalists in order to get the Constitution ratified by the states. Jeffrey St. John writes, for example, of the delicate balance of James Madison, a Federalist, in hammering out one agreement. The Anti-Federalists called for a ban on a peacetime professional army, but Madison offered "the Second Amendment, giving citizens the right to keep and bear arms, and the Third Amendment, banning the quartering of troops in private homes in peacetime and requiring a law to do so in wartime" (St. John xxii). Madison thereby won federalism the strong arm of a military instead of leaving protection of the new nation to separate state militias."

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• Term Paper # 149044 : "History of Healthcare in the United States"

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