Nation and States: Federalism

What federalism is, and why the founders chose it

Look at the pay stub of almost anyone who works in New York City and lives in one of the five boroughs. Below the line for the pay itself, there is a list of amounts taken out before the worker ever sees the money. One line says something like "Federal income tax." Another says "NY State income tax." A third says "NYC income tax." Three different governments have each taken a share of the same paycheck.

The word, and what it means

Federalism is a system of government in which power is divided between a national government and the governments of smaller parts of the country, such as states. Each level has its own powers, its own officials, and its own laws. Each one can act directly on the people. Neither level can abolish the other.

A word of warning about one word. In the United States, people call the national government "the federal government." When a news report says "federal law," "federal court," or "federal agents," it means the national government, the one in Washington. So the "federal government" is only one half of the federal system. The other half is the states. This chapter uses "national government" and "federal government" to mean the same thing. (Chapter 4 explains that, before 1787, the word "federal" meant something closer to a league of independent states. The supporters of the Constitution took the name "Federalists" and the meaning changed.)

Three ways to arrange a country's power

Countries can arrange power between the center and the parts in three main ways. The GED test sometimes asks you to tell them apart.

Notice the second example in the "unitary" row. Inside each state, the relationship between the state government and its cities is not federal. A city is created by its state, and it has only the powers the state gives it. New York City has its own government, its own laws, and its own mayor, but those powers come from New York State, through the state constitution and laws passed in Albany. The state legislature can change them. Part 6 returns to this. For now, remember: between the nation and the states, power is divided by the U.S. Constitution. Between a state and its cities, power is handed down by the state.

Why the founders chose it

The men who wrote the Constitution in 1787 had already tried two other arrangements, and neither had worked for them.

The first was the British Empire. Before 1776, the colonies were ruled by a single, distant government, the king and Parliament in London. That government taxed the colonists and made laws for them, and the colonists had no one in Parliament to speak for them. That was close to a unitary system, with all the final power at the center. The Revolution was fought to get out from under it (Chapter 1).

The second was the Articles of Confederation. After independence, the states kept almost all the power for themselves and gave the national Congress very little. Congress could not tax, could not control trade between the states, and could not make the states obey. It could only ask. As Chapter 2 tells, the result was unpaid debts, an unpaid army, states taxing each other's goods, and a national government that could do nothing during Shays' Rebellion.

So the founders were trying to find a path between two dangers: a central government so strong that it could crush the states and the people's liberty, as they believed Britain had tried to do, and a central government so weak that it could not hold the country together, as under the Articles. Federalism was their answer. The national government would get real power, including the power to tax and to make laws that act directly on each person. But it would get only the powers listed in the Constitution. Everything else would stay with the states.

There were practical reasons too. The thirteen states already existed. Each had its own constitution, its own legislature, its own courts, and its own history. Most people felt loyal to their state first. A plan that tried to abolish the states would never have been approved. The country was also very large for its time. In 1787 it could take weeks to travel from Georgia to New Hampshire. Many people believed that a single government far away could not know or care about local needs.

James Madison, one of the main writers of the Constitution, explained the plan in one of the Federalist Papers, the newspaper essays written in 1787 and 1788 to persuade New Yorkers to approve the Constitution (Chapter 4):

In plain words: In America, the power the people hand over to government is first split between two separate governments, the national government and the state governments. Then each one's share is split again among separate branches. So the people's rights are protected twice. The national and state governments will keep each other in check, and inside each government the branches will keep each other in check. (Compound means made of more than one part. Surrendered means handed over. Allotted means given as a share. Departments here means branches.)

Chapter 5 was about the second division Madison describes, the separation of powers among three branches. This chapter is about the first division, between the nation and the states. Put the two together and you have what Madison called a "double security." If one government tries to take too much power, there is another government that can push back. If one branch tries to take too much, there are two other branches that can push back.

Who was protected, and who was not

There is another side to this story, and the GED test expects you to know it. Leaving power with the states also meant leaving each state free to decide who would have rights inside it. In 1787 that included the power to keep people enslaved. The delegates from the Southern states would not have agreed to a Constitution that let the national government end slavery inside their states, and the Constitution did not give it that power. The Constitution also left it to the states to decide who could vote. In 1787 almost every state allowed only men who owned property or paid taxes to vote. Enslaved people could not vote, women could not vote (except, for a few years, some property-owning women in New Jersey), and many poor men could not vote either. Chapter 3 tells how slavery was written into the bargains of the Convention. Part 8 of this chapter shows how the idea of "states' rights" was later used both to defend slavery and segregation and, at other times, to protect liberty. The same arrangement can protect freedom or protect injustice, depending on who is using it and for what.

Delegated, reserved, and concurrent powers

The Constitution does not divide power by saying "the nation gets these, the states get those" in one neat list. You have to put the pieces together from several places. When you do, you find four kinds of powers. The GED test uses these names, so learn each one with its examples.

Delegated powers: the nation's powers

Delegated powers are the powers the Constitution gives to the national government. To delegate means to hand over a job or a power to someone else. Here, the people, through the Constitution, hand certain powers to the national government. Because these powers are listed, or enumerated, one by one, they are also called enumerated powers (enumerated means listed, counted out). Most of them are in Article I, Section 8, the list of the powers of Congress that Chapter 5 explained. A few are elsewhere, such as the power to make treaties (Article II) and the power to admit new states (Article IV).

The delegated powers include the power to declare war, raise an army and navy, make treaties with other countries, coin money and set its value, run the post office, regulate trade with other countries and between the states, make the rules for becoming a citizen, and grant patents and copyrights. Notice that most of these are things a country needs to do with one voice. It would make no sense for New York to have its own army and its own money, and for New Jersey to have different ones. Under the Articles, the states had printed their own money and taxed each other's goods, and Chapter 2 showed how much trouble that caused.

There is one more group of national powers. The last clause of Article I, Section 8, the "necessary and proper" clause, lets Congress pass the laws it needs in order to carry out its listed powers. The powers that come from that clause, rather than from the list itself, are called implied powers. To imply is to suggest something without saying it outright. For example, the Constitution never mentions a national bank, but Congress created one as a way to carry out its powers to tax and borrow. Part 3 tells that story.

Reserved powers: the states' powers

Reserved powers are the powers that the Constitution does not give to the national government, and does not forbid to the states. They stay with the states, or with the people. To reserve something is to keep it back. The Tenth Amendment, ratified in 1791 as the last of the Bill of Rights, says so in writing:

In plain words: Any power that the Constitution does not hand to the national government, and does not forbid to the states, belongs to the states or to the people. (Delegated means handed over. Prohibited means forbidden. Reserved means kept back. Respectively here means each state for itself.)

Read the amendment slowly, with the method from Chapter 5. Who? "The powers," meaning all the powers of government. Which ones? Only those that pass two tests: they are "not delegated to the United States," and they are "not prohibited ... to the States." Where do those powers go? To "the States respectively, or to the people." So the Tenth Amendment works like a sorting rule. If a power is on the national list, it belongs to the nation. If a power is forbidden to the states, they cannot have it. Everything else stays with the states and the people. (Chapter 7 reads this amendment too, with a case about New York.)

The Tenth Amendment answered a fear you met in Chapter 4. The Anti-Federalists, the opponents of the Constitution, warned that the new national government would swallow the states. The supporters of the Constitution answered that the national government would have only its listed powers. Madison put it this way:

In plain words: The Constitution gives the national government a small number of powers, and it spells them out. The powers left with the state governments are many, and they are not listed or limited in the same way. (Defined means clearly marked out. Indefinite means without fixed limits.) In the same essay, Madison said the states' powers would reach "all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people." In other words, the everyday business of government would belong to the states.

What are the reserved powers? The Constitution does not list them, because they are whatever is left over. But some of the most important are these: setting up public schools; making the rules for marriage and divorce; issuing driver's licenses and licenses for many jobs, such as nurses, teachers, and barbers; running elections (within limits set by the Constitution and federal law); creating local governments such as cities and counties; and making most criminal laws, such as the laws against robbery and assault. Most crimes are state crimes, tried in state courts.

Behind many of these is a reserved power that has a confusing name: the police power. It does not mean only the police. The police power is a state's general power to make laws to protect the health, safety, welfare, and morals of the people. Building codes, restaurant inspections, speed limits, rules for landlords, and laws requiring children to be vaccinated before school all come from the police power. The national government has no general police power. It can act only through its listed powers, such as its power over trade between the states.

Concurrent powers: powers both may use

Concurrent powers are powers that both the national government and the state governments may use at the same time. Concurrent means happening together, side by side. The pay stub at the start of this chapter shows the most important one: the power to tax. Washington taxes your income, and so does Albany. Other concurrent powers include borrowing money, setting up courts, making and enforcing laws, spending money for the general welfare, and taking private property for public use as long as the owner is paid a fair price. (That last power is called eminent domain. Both the national government and New York State have used it, for example to take land for highways.)

Powers denied to the nation

The Constitution also lists things that no government may do, or that one level may not do. These are called denied powers, or prohibited powers. Article I, Section 9 lists powers denied to the national government. Chapter 5 read some of them: Congress may not suspend the writ of habeas corpus except in a rebellion or invasion, may not punish a person without a trial, and may not grant titles of nobility. Two more clauses in Section 9 protect the states from being treated unequally:

In plain words: Congress may not tax goods that are sent out of the country for sale. (The Supreme Court has long read "exported" here to mean shipped to other countries, not shipped from one state to another.) And Congress may not pass trade or tax laws that favor the ports of one state over the ports of another. (Articles here means goods, not parts of a document. Exported means sent out to be sold. Duty means a tax on goods. Preference means favor.) So Congress could not, for example, pass a law that made ships pay lower fees in New York Harbor than in the port of Baltimore.

Powers denied to the states

Article I, Section 10 lists powers denied to the states. This section is the other side of the delegated powers. Many of the powers given to the nation are also taken away from the states, so that the country speaks with one voice.

In plain words: No state may make a treaty or an alliance with another country, or join a confederation. No state may give private ship owners permission to attack the ships of an enemy (that permission was called a letter of marque and reprisal). No state may coin money or print paper money (emit bills of credit means issue paper money). No state may force people to accept anything but gold and silver coins in payment of debts (a tender is money that must be accepted). No state may punish a person by passing a law against him instead of giving him a trial (a bill of attainder). No state may punish people for something that was legal when they did it (an ex post facto law, Latin for "after the fact"). No state may pass a law that cancels or weakens contracts (impairing the obligation of contracts). And no state may make anyone a lord or a duke.

Several of these rules answer the troubles of the 1780s that Chapter 2 described. States had printed their own paper money, and some had passed laws that gave debtors more time to pay or let them pay in paper worth less than what they had borrowed. The creditors, the people who were owed money, were furious. The Constitution put a stop to state paper money and to state laws that weaken contracts.

The next part of Section 10 says that no state may do certain other things without the consent of Congress: tax goods coming into or leaving the state, keep troops or warships in peacetime, make an agreement with another state or a foreign country, or go to war unless it is actually invaded or in such immediate danger that it cannot wait. Notice the words "without the consent of Congress." With that consent, some of these things are allowed. Here is one you may have used. In 1921 New York and New Jersey made an agreement with each other, called a compact, to create the Port of New York Authority, and Congress approved it. Today it is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridges and tunnels between New York and New Jersey, the PATH trains, the bus terminal in Midtown, and the area's major airports.

Sorting the powers

Here is a long list of examples, sorted. Cover the middle column with your hand, read the power, and try to name the kind before you look. The last column gives the reason, which is what the test really wants you to understand.

A tip for test day. When a question asks whether a power belongs to the nation, the state, or both, ask two questions in order. First: does the country need one rule for everyone, such as one money, one army, one foreign policy? If so, it is probably delegated. Second: is it something that both levels plainly need in order to run any government at all, such as taxing, borrowing, and courts? If so, it is probably concurrent. If it is about everyday life inside a state, such as schools, licenses, marriage, and most crimes, it is probably reserved.

Drills for this part: II.15 Delegated, reserved, or concurrent power?. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

The elastic clause, the supremacy clause, and McCulloch v. Maryland

Part 2 sorted the powers into neat boxes. Real life is not so neat. Two clauses of the Constitution decide what happens at the edges of the boxes: one says how far the national government's powers reach, and the other says who wins when a national law and a state law collide. The most famous case about both of them is McCulloch v. Maryland, decided in 1819.

The necessary and proper clause

Chapter 5 introduced this clause, the last one in the list of the powers of Congress. Here it is again, because this part of the chapter depends on it.

In plain words: Congress may make the laws that are needed and suitable for putting into action the powers listed before this clause, and the other powers the Constitution gives to the national government. (Foregoing means the ones that came before. Vested means given.)

Because this clause lets the powers of Congress stretch to fit new needs, it is called the elastic clause. Elastic means able to stretch, like the waistband of a pair of sweatpants. The big question is how far it can stretch. Everything depends on one word: necessary. If "necessary" means "absolutely needed, with no other way to do it," then Congress can do very little beyond its list. If "necessary" means "useful" or "helpful," then Congress can do a great deal.

The supremacy clause

The second clause is in Article VI. It answers the question: when a national law and a state law say opposite things, which one must people obey?

In plain words: The Constitution, the national laws made under it, and the treaties of the United States are the highest law in the country. Judges in every state must follow them, even if their own state's constitution or laws say something different. (In pursuance thereof means in keeping with it, under its authority. Supreme means highest. Bound thereby means required to follow it. Notwithstanding means in spite of.)

Read the clause carefully, because there is a limit hidden in it. Only national laws "made in Pursuance" of the Constitution are supreme. A national law that goes beyond the powers the Constitution gives is not supreme; it is not valid at all. So the supremacy clause does not mean the national government always wins. It means that when the national government acts within its powers, a state cannot block it. When a valid federal law and a state law conflict, the federal law wins. Lawyers call this preemption: the federal law preempts, or pushes aside, the state law.

Chapter 4 told how the Anti-Federalists feared exactly these two clauses. Put together, they said, the elastic clause would let Congress do almost anything, and the supremacy clause would let it override the states whenever it did. The states would be swallowed up. In 1819 the Supreme Court had to decide how much of that fear was justified.

The Bank of the United States

The story begins in 1790 and 1791, in the first years of the new government. Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, asked Congress to create a national bank. A bank, then as now, is a business that keeps people's money safe, lends money, and helps move money from place to place. Hamilton wanted the Bank of the United States to hold the government's money, lend to the government when it needed to borrow, and give the country a steady supply of paper money that people could trust.

The Constitution does not mention a bank. It does not give Congress the power to create a corporation, which is a business set up by law with its own legal identity. So was the bank allowed? President Washington asked his cabinet. Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of State, said no. He read "necessary" strictly: Congress could do only what was truly needed to carry out its listed powers, and the government could manage its money without a bank. Hamilton said yes. He read "necessary" broadly: it meant useful or helpful for carrying out a power, and a bank was a useful way to carry out the powers to tax and to borrow. These two ways of reading the Constitution have names. Jefferson's view is called a strict construction, or strict reading. Hamilton's is called a loose construction, or broad reading. (Construction here means the way a document is interpreted, not building.)

Washington agreed with Hamilton and signed the bill in 1791. The bank's charter, the legal paper that created it, ran for twenty years. In 1811 Congress let it expire. Then came the War of 1812 against Britain, and the government had great trouble paying for it. In 1816 Congress created a Second Bank of the United States, also with a twenty-year charter. It opened branches in many cities, including one in Baltimore, Maryland.

Maryland's tax

Many people disliked the Second Bank. State banks saw it as a powerful rival. Many farmers and borrowers blamed it when it called in loans and money became hard to get, and the hard times that followed in 1819 deepened that anger. Several states passed laws to tax the Bank's branches or drive them out. Maryland's law, passed in 1818, said that any bank in the state that was not created by the state of Maryland had to print its paper money on special stamped paper, paying a fee for each note, or else pay the state $15,000 a year.

One of the chief officers of the Baltimore branch was a man named James McCulloch. His title was cashier. He refused to pay. He kept issuing the Bank's notes without the stamps. Maryland sued him in its own courts and won. McCulloch appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. The famous lawyer Daniel Webster argued for the Bank. One of Maryland's lawyers was Luther Martin, who had been a delegate at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, had walked out before it finished, and had then fought against the Constitution because he believed it gave the national government too much power.

The case put two questions to the Court:

Marshall's first answer: Congress could create the Bank

The Court decided the case on March 6, 1819. The decision was unanimous; every justice agreed. Chief Justice John Marshall, the same Marshall who wrote Marbury v. Madison in Chapter 5, wrote the opinion.

Maryland's lawyers had argued that the Constitution was an agreement among the states, and that the states, not the national government, were truly sovereign (holding the final power). Marshall disagreed. The Constitution had been approved by conventions of the people in each state, not by the state governments, and it begins "We the People." So, he wrote, the national government

In plain words: The national government truly belongs to the people. It comes from them, both in the way it was made and in what it is. They gave it its powers, and it uses those powers directly on them and for their good. (Emphatically means strongly, without doubt. Emanates means comes out of, flows from.)

Then Marshall turned to the word "necessary." He pointed out that in ordinary speech, people often use "necessary" to mean something that is useful or helpful for a goal, not something without which the goal is impossible. He found proof in the Constitution itself. In Article I, Section 10, the Constitution forbids states to tax imports "except what may be absolutely necessary" for their inspection laws. When the writers meant "absolutely necessary," Marshall said, they wrote "absolutely." In the elastic clause, they wrote only "necessary and proper." He also reminded his readers what kind of document they were reading:

In plain words: We have to remember that we are interpreting a constitution, a plan of government meant to last for a long time and to deal with problems no one could foresee, not a detailed legal code that lists every possible case. (Expounding means explaining or interpreting.)

Then came the sentence that later courts have quoted again and again, Marshall's test for whether a law passed under the elastic clause is allowed:

In plain words: If the goal is a proper one, inside the powers the Constitution gives, then any method that is suitable for reaching that goal, clearly fits it, is not forbidden, and agrees with both the words and the purpose of the Constitution, is allowed. (End here means goal. Legitimate means lawful, proper. Means here means methods, ways of doing something. Plainly adapted means clearly suited. Consist with means agree with.)

Marshall's test has two halves. First, the goal must be one the Constitution allows: collecting taxes, borrowing money, paying for an army. Second, the method must be a reasonable way to reach that goal and must not be forbidden by anything else in the Constitution. A national bank passed both halves. The goal, managing the government's money, was plainly within its powers. The bank was a reasonable method, and nothing in the Constitution forbade it.

Marshall also added a warning on the other side. If Congress ever used its powers as an excuse to do something the Constitution did not allow, the Court would have the "painful duty" of saying that such a law "was not the law of the land." The elastic clause stretches, but it is not without limits.

Marshall's second answer: Maryland could not tax the Bank

The second question was harder for many people to accept, because the power to tax is one of the most basic powers a state has. Marshall reasoned like this. The national government created the Bank under a valid law. Under the supremacy clause, a valid national law is supreme. If a state can tax something, it can set the tax as high as it likes, and so it can tax that thing out of existence.

In plain words: No one can deny that the power to tax something includes the power to destroy it, and that a power to destroy something can wipe out the power that created it and make it useless. (Involves here means includes, carries with it. Render means make. Propositions means statements offered as true.)

Marshall then showed where Maryland's argument would lead if the Court accepted it:

In plain words: If a state may tax the Bank, then it may also tax the mail, the place where the nation's coins are made, the nation's patents, the paperwork of the offices that collect duties on imports, and the work of the federal courts. It could tax every tool the national government uses, so heavily that the national government could no longer do its job. (The mint is where coins are made. A custom-house is the office at a port where taxes on imported goods are collected. Judicial process means the papers and orders of a court.)

If that were allowed, Marshall said, the national government would depend on the states for its life, which is just what the Constitution had been written to end. So the Court held that Maryland's tax was "unconstitutional and void." Marshall was careful to say what the decision did not do. Maryland could still tax the Bank's land and buildings in the same way it taxed everyone else's land and buildings. What it could not do was aim a tax at the operations of the national government.

What the case decided, and what came after

McCulloch v. Maryland settled three things that still matter today.

1. Implied powers are real. Congress may use any reasonable means to carry out its listed powers, even means the Constitution does not name. Later laws creating national programs and agencies have rested on this idea.
2. National supremacy. When the national government acts within its powers, the states may not block it, tax it, or interfere with it.
3. The Constitution comes from the people, not from the state governments. That answered Patrick Henry's question in Chapter 4 about "We, the People" instead of "We, the States."

Not everyone accepted the decision. Judges and writers in Virginia attacked it in a series of newspaper essays, warning that Marshall's reading of the elastic clause left almost no limit on what Congress could do. The argument over the Bank also continued. In 1832 President Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill to renew the Bank's charter. He argued that each branch of government must decide for itself whether a law is constitutional, whatever the Court had said, and that the Bank gave too much power to a few wealthy men. The Second Bank's national charter ran out in 1836. But the case itself, and Marshall's reading of the elastic clause, became one of the foundations of American law.

Drills for this part: II.16 The elastic clause and the supremacy clause: McCulloch v. Maryland · III.27 The power of the national government: Marbury, McCulloch, Gibbons, U.S. v. Nixon. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

The commerce clause and Gibbons v. Ogden

Part 3 told the story of one great case about how far the national government's powers reach. Five years later, in 1824, the Supreme Court decided another one, and this one began right here, on the water around New York City. It is the story of a fight over steamboats: who could carry passengers by steamboat between New Jersey and Manhattan, and who had the right to decide that, New York State or the Congress of the United States. It was a fight over transit. Transit means carrying people from one place to another, the same work that the PATH trains, the buses through the Lincoln Tunnel, and the ferries across the Hudson do every day for the people who travel between New Jersey and New York. In the 1810s and 1820s, that work was done by boats. Writers who tell this story sometimes call it the steamboat war. It was not a war fought with weapons. It was fought with state laws, licenses, and lawsuits, and in the end two states were on opposite sides of it.

The case is called Gibbons v. Ogden. It is about a clause of the Constitution called the commerce clause. It is still one of the most important cases about the line between the nation and the states, and the GED test sometimes asks about it.

The commerce clause

Part 2 listed, among the delegated powers of the nation, the power to "regulate trade with other countries and between the states." Here are the exact words. They are one line in the list of the powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8.

In plain words: Congress has the power to make the rules for trade with other countries, for trade between the states, and for trade with the Native American nations. (Regulate means to make rules for something and see that they are followed. Commerce means trade: buying and selling, and the business of moving goods and people from place to place. Among the several States means between the separate states. Indian Tribes is the Constitution's name for the Native American nations.) The semicolon at the end is in the original, because this clause is one item in a long list.

This clause is called the commerce clause. Chapter 2 showed why the founders wanted it. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress could not control trade, so each state made its own rules. New York, for example, charged fees on boats bringing goods from New Jersey and Connecticut. The commerce clause gave the power over trade between the states to Congress, so that one set of national rules would replace thirteen sets of state rules.

But the clause is short, and it left three questions open. First, what counts as "commerce"? Does it mean only buying and selling goods, or does it also include carrying people and goods on boats and roads? Second, how far does the power over commerce "among the several States" reach? Does it stop at each state's border, or can it reach inside a state, for example onto the water of New York Harbor? Third, what happens when a state makes one rule about that commerce and Congress makes another? The steamboat case answered all three.

A monopoly on New York's waters

A steamboat is a boat driven by a steam engine. A fire under a boiler turns water into steam, and the steam drives an engine that turns large paddle wheels on the sides of the boat. Before steamboats, a boat on the Hudson had to go where the wind and the current let it. A steamboat could go against both.

In 1798, before anyone in America had built a steamboat that worked well enough to make money, the New York State Legislature gave Robert R. Livingston the sole right to run boats moved by fire or steam on all the waters of the state for twenty years. Livingston was one of the most powerful men in New York. He was the chancellor of New York, the judge at the head of the state's Court of Chancery, a court that could order people to do something or to stop doing it. The law gave him the right on one condition: within twelve months, he had to build a steamboat of at least twenty tons that could travel at least four miles an hour. He could not do it in time.

A grant like this is called a monopoly. A monopoly is the sole right to sell something or to run a certain kind of business, so that no one else may compete. A person who holds a monopoly can set prices without worrying that a rival will charge less. To hold a monopoly from the state is to have the state's power on your side: anyone who competes with you is breaking the law.

In 1801 Livingston went to France as the United States' minister, its official representative. In Paris he met Robert Fulton, an inventor and engineer from Pennsylvania, and the two agreed to build steamboats together. In 1803 the New York legislature renewed the grant to both men, Livingston and Fulton, for twenty years, and gave them more time to prove their boat. On August 17, 1807, their boat, which Fulton called the North River Steamboat, left Manhattan for Albany. (People later called it the Clermont, after Livingston's estate on the Hudson.) It ran through the night, past the river towns, Newburgh among them, and reached Clermont, about 110 miles up the river, the next afternoon. After a night there, it went on to Albany. Fulton wrote that the whole trip, about 150 miles, took thirty-two hours of travel, nearly five miles an hour, with a light wind against the boat the whole way. That September the boat began carrying paying passengers between New York and Albany.

Then the monopoly was made stronger. A law passed in April 1808 said that for each new boat Livingston and Fulton put on the water, their monopoly would last five more years, up to a total of thirty years. It said that no one could run a steamboat on the waters of the state without a license from them, and that anyone who did would forfeit (lose) the boat and its engine to them. A license is official permission to do something that would otherwise be forbidden. A driver's license, a license to sell food from a cart on a city street, and a license to work as a barber are all examples. Under the 1808 law, only Livingston and Fulton could give out licenses to run steamboats in New York, and they sold them. A law of 1811 made the penalties easier to enforce. New York also claimed that its waters reached all the way to the New Jersey shore, so a boat leaving a New Jersey dock for Manhattan was on New York water almost as soon as it left.

Other states objected. In 1811 the New Jersey legislature passed a law to strike back at the New York monopoly. Connecticut and Ohio later passed laws against it too. Several other states gave out steamboat monopolies of their own. It began to look as though the states would once again treat each other's boats and goods as foreign, as they had under the Articles of Confederation.

Two neighbors from Elizabethtown

The two men whose names are on the case lived near each other in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, the town that is now the city of Elizabeth.

Aaron Ogden had been an officer in the Revolutionary War. He became a lawyer, a United States senator, and, from 1812 to 1813, the governor of New Jersey. At first he fought the New York monopoly. He tried to run steamboats between New Jersey and New York without its permission, and he asked the lawmakers of both states for help. His efforts failed, and in 1815 he gave in. He bought from the monopoly the right to run a steam ferry between Elizabethtown Point, on the New Jersey shore, and New York City. He bought it from John R. Livingston, Robert Livingston's younger brother, who had bought the rights to that part of the harbor from the monopoly in 1808. Now Ogden held a license from the New York monopoly.

Thomas Gibbons was a wealthy lawyer and politician from Savannah, Georgia, who had once been the mayor of that city. He owned several rice and cotton plantations in Georgia, and the work on them was done by enslaved people. When he died, his son inherited plantations with more than five hundred enslaved people on them. Around 1810 Gibbons bought an estate in Elizabethtown, and he and Ogden became neighbors.

In 1817 the two men became partners in the steamboat business. The partnership went badly from the start, and the two men came to dislike each other bitterly. In 1818 Gibbons began running a steamboat of his own between New Jersey and New York, in competition with Ogden, without a license from the monopoly. Over the next years his two boats, the Stoudinger and the Bellona, ran on the route between Elizabethtown Point and New York City.

Gibbons had a license of a different kind. In 1793 Congress had passed a law called "An act for enrolling and licensing ships and vessels to be employed in the coasting trade and fisheries, and for regulating the same." The coasting trade means carrying goods and passengers by water from one American port to another along the coast, rather than across the ocean to other countries. Under this law, a boat of twenty tons or more could be enrolled (entered in an official national list) and licensed by the national government to carry on the coasting trade. Gibbons's boats held these federal licenses. So on the same water, between the same two docks, there were now two licenses that said opposite things.

Ogden went to the New York courts. In October 1818 the chancellor of New York, James Kent, one of the most respected judges in the country, issued an injunction against Gibbons. An injunction is a court order telling a person to stop doing something, or to do something. Kent's order forbade Gibbons to run his steamboats on the waters the monopoly covered. Gibbons argued that his federal license gave him the right to make the trip. Kent disagreed. In 1819 he ruled that the federal license only made a boat count as an American vessel, so that it paid lower fees than a foreign ship would. It did not, Kent said, give the boat a right to go where New York's law forbade it. He made the injunction permanent. In 1820 the highest court of New York at that time, called the Court for the Correction of Errors, agreed with Kent. Gibbons appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The young captain of the Bellona

The captain of the Bellona was a young man from Staten Island named Cornelius Vanderbilt. He was born there in 1794. At sixteen he started his own ferry business, carrying passengers and goods in a small sailboat between Staten Island and Manhattan. Around 1818, when he was in his early twenties, Gibbons hired him to captain his steamboat, and Vanderbilt soon became the manager of Gibbons's whole steamboat line.

Vanderbilt kept the Bellona running while the courts argued. New York's court orders said the boat must stop, and the monopoly's side kept trying to have him arrested and the boat taken. Accounts of his life tell how he kept out of their reach. New York's officers had no power on the New Jersey side of the water, so the boat was safe once it was back at Elizabethtown Point. He and Gibbons also found ways around the court orders. For a while, the Bellona carried passengers from Elizabethtown Point and then moved them, while both boats were still in New Jersey waters, onto another steamboat, the Nautilus. The Nautilus held a license from the monopoly for the trip between Staten Island and New York City, so it could carry the passengers the rest of the way. It belonged to Daniel D. Tompkins, a former governor of New York, who was then the vice president of the United States and a political opponent of the Livingston family. The fare was fifty cents. In December 1819, Chancellor Kent put a stop to that plan too.

Vanderbilt went on to become one of the richest men in America. He built a large fleet of steamboats and, later in life, gained control of several of New York's largest railroads; his railroad company built the first Grand Central station in Manhattan. He got his start in the steamboat business here, working for Gibbons against the monopoly on the water between New Jersey and New York.

The steamboat war between two states

By 1820 the quarrel between two neighbors had become a quarrel between two states. Gibbons persuaded the New Jersey legislature to pass a new law against the monopoly, and it did so on February 20, 1820. Under this law, if a person from outside New Jersey used a New York court to stop a New Jersey citizen from running a steamboat on the waters between the shores of New Jersey, the New Jersey courts could forbid that person's own steamboats to run there in return. They could also make him pay the New Jersey citizen's damages (the money lost because of the harm) and three times the costs of the lawsuit. A law like this, made to strike back at another state, is called a retaliatory law. To retaliate means to strike back.

New Jersey used the law. John R. Livingston, the monopoly's man for this part of the harbor, ran a steamboat called the Olive Branch between New York and New Brunswick, New Jersey. In 1819 he had won an order in a New York court against Gibbons. Now, under the new law, his own boat was held by the New Jersey authorities at New Brunswick until the damages that Gibbons claimed were settled. For a time he took the boat out of service.

So a person standing on a dock in Elizabethtown Point in 1820 could see the problem that the Constitution had been written to solve. One state's law said a boat was legal. The other state's law said it was not. Each state's courts punished people who obeyed the other state. Travelers, boat owners, and their workers could not know which law to obey.

The case reaches the Supreme Court

Gibbons's appeal waited in the Supreme Court for several years. The Court heard the arguments over five days in February 1824. By then it was a famous case, and both sides had hired famous lawyers.

For Gibbons, the lawyers were Daniel Webster, a congressman from Massachusetts, who had also argued for the Bank in McCulloch v. Maryland (Part 3), and William Wirt, the Attorney General of the United States. For Ogden, the lawyers were Thomas Addis Emmet, a leading New York lawyer who had come to America as an exile from Ireland, and Thomas J. Oakley, a former attorney general of New York.

Marshall's first answer: commerce includes navigation

The Court decided the case on March 2, 1824. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the opinion. Six justices took part, and all six agreed that Gibbons should win. (Justice Smith Thompson did not take part. Justice William Johnson agreed with the result and wrote a separate opinion of his own.)

Marshall began with the meaning of the word "commerce." Ogden's lawyers had said it meant only buying and selling, which they called traffic. Marshall answered:

In plain words: Commerce certainly includes buying and selling, but it is more than that. It includes all the dealings and contact between countries, and between parts of countries, in every form, and the way to regulate it is to make rules for how those dealings are carried on. (Undoubtedly means certainly. Traffic here means buying and selling goods, not cars on a road. Intercourse here has its old meaning: dealings, contact, and communication between people or places. Prescribing means setting down, as a rule.)

Marshall gave his reasons. Everyone in America, he said, had understood "commerce" to include navigation when the Constitution was written. A country could not regulate its trade with other countries without making rules for ships. He also pointed to the Constitution's own words. In Article I, Section 9, the Constitution forbids Congress to give, "by any Regulation of Commerce," a preference to the ports of one state over those of another, and it forbids requiring ships going to or from one state to stop and pay duties in another. You read part of that clause in Part 2. Those words, Marshall said, "have a direct reference to navigation." If the writers of the Constitution had not believed that regulating commerce included regulating ships, they would not have needed to write that rule at all.

Next Marshall turned to the words "among the several States."

In plain words: "Among" means mixed in with. If something is among other things, it is mixed in with them. So trade between the states does not stop at the border of each state. It can go inside a state, and so can the power of Congress over it. (Intermingled means mixed together. External boundary line means the outside border. The interior means the inside of the state.)

Think of a trip on the Bellona. It started at a dock in New Jersey and ended at a dock in Manhattan. If the power of Congress stopped at the state line, it could reach only the part of the trip that crossed the line, and New York could control everything after that. Marshall said that made no sense. A trip from one state to another is one trip, and the power of Congress covers the whole of it. He then applied this to the water where the case began:

In plain words: So the power of Congress includes navigation inside the borders of every state, whenever that navigation is connected in any way with trade with other countries, between the states, or with Native American nations. That means the power of Congress can cross New York's border and apply to the very same waters that New York's monopoly law covers. (Comprehends here means includes, not understands. Of consequence means as a result. Jurisdictional line means the border of the area a government controls. The prohibition now under consideration means New York's ban on unlicensed steamboats, the law the Court was examining.)

Marshall also said how strong this power is. Once a subject belongs to Congress under the commerce clause, Congress's power over it is full:

In plain words: This power, like every other power the Constitution gives to Congress, is whole and complete. Congress may use all of it, and it has no limits except the limits the Constitution itself sets. (Vested in means given to. Exercised means used. Utmost extent means the farthest it can go. Acknowledges no limitations means accepts no limits. Prescribed means set down.)

Marshall's second answer: the federal license wins

The second question was what to do when the two licenses collided. Webster had argued that the power over commerce between the states belonged to Congress alone, so that New York's law was void even if Congress had never passed any law about steamboats. Marshall wrote that there was "great force" in that argument, but he did not need to decide it. Congress had passed a law, the licensing act of 1793, and Gibbons's boats held licenses under it. That was enough to decide the case, using a clause you met in Part 3: the supremacy clause, which makes valid laws of Congress "the supreme Law of the Land."

In plain words: Whichever way you look at New York's laws, they must give way to the law of Congress. So the New York court's decision, which upheld the monopoly's special right against a right that a national law gave to Gibbons, was wrong. (In one case and the other means either way. The acts of New-York means the laws of New York; the spelling "New-York," with a hyphen, was common at the time. Yield means give way. Sustaining means upholding. The privilege they confer means the special right New York's laws gave to the monopoly. The Union means the United States. Erroneous means wrong.)

Ogden's side had one more argument. The 1793 law was written for ordinary ships, they said, and said nothing about steamboats. Marshall answered that the laws of Congress about commerce "do not look to the principle by which vessels are moved," meaning they do not care what makes a boat go. Congress had also passed a law in 1812 about enrolling and licensing steamboats, which showed that Congress meant steamboats to be licensed in the same way as sailing ships. And so:

In plain words: Steamboats have the same rights as sailboats. A state may no more stop a licensed steamboat from using waters and ports that are open to sailboats than it could stop a sailboat, just because the steamboat is driven by fire instead of by the wind. (Entitled to means having a right to. Restrained means held back, stopped. Wafted means carried gently through the air or over water, as by a breeze. Propelled means pushed forward. By the agency of fire means by the work of fire, that is, by a steam engine.)

The Court reversed the decision of the New York court, which means it overturned it, and ordered Ogden's case against Gibbons dismissed. Gibbons's boats, the Stoudinger and the Bellona, were free to run between New Jersey and New York. The part of New York's law that kept federally licensed boats off its waters was, in the Court's words, "repugnant to the said constitution, and void," meaning in conflict with the Constitution and of no force.

What the states kept

Marshall did not say that Congress could control every kind of business. He drew a line. Trade that stays entirely inside one state, and does not affect other states, belongs to the state:

In plain words: Trade that happens entirely inside one state can be treated as belonging to that state to regulate. (Completely internal means entirely inside, not crossing any border. Reserved means kept back for, the same word the Tenth Amendment uses in Part 2.)

He also named many kinds of state laws that the decision did not touch, laws that belong to what Part 2 called the police power:

In plain words: Laws for inspecting goods, laws for holding back ships or people who may carry disease, every kind of health law, laws for trade inside a state, and laws about toll roads, ferries, and similar things, are all part of the large body of law that stays with the states. (Inspection laws are laws for checking the quality of goods. Quarantine laws are laws that keep people, animals, or ships apart for a time so a disease will not spread. Respect here means concern, are about. A turnpike road is a road that charges a toll. &c. is an old way of writing "etc.," and so on. Component parts means pieces. This mass means the great body of laws the states keep.)

So Gibbons v. Ogden did not take away the states' powers. It drew a line between two kinds of commerce. Commerce that crosses state lines, or affects other states, is for Congress to regulate. Commerce that is completely inside one state is for the state. For the next hundred years and more, much of the argument about national power was an argument about where exactly that line falls. Part 7 tells how the Supreme Court moved it in the 1900s.

What came after

On the water. The decision ended the monopoly's control of steamboat trips between New York and other states. A year later, in 1825, New York's own highest court ruled in another case that the monopoly was not valid even for trips entirely inside New York. Anyone could now build a steamboat and put it on the Hudson, and many people did. With competition, fares came down. In 1829 Vanderbilt left the Gibbons line and went into business for himself, and in the 1830s he ran boats on the Hudson against the older lines, cutting fares far below what they charged. Competition did not always last. Some steamboat owners joined together in associations that kept fares high, and when a newcomer cut prices, they would sometimes pay him to stop competing. In 1834 one such group, the Hudson River Steamboat Association, paid Vanderbilt to leave the Hudson. So the end of a monopoly granted by a state did not end every arrangement that kept prices high.

For the people in the story. Gibbons died in 1826, a very rich man. Ogden lost his fortune. In his later years he was jailed in New York for his debts, as the law then allowed, and was let out only when the New York legislature passed a law forbidding the jailing of Revolutionary War veterans for debt.

The argument over the decision. Many people cheered it, because it opened the waters to anyone with a boat. But not everyone was pleased. Thomas Jefferson, then in his eighties, was among those who saw it as one more step in the national government's taking power from the states. And historians point out that some slaveholders were alarmed. If Congress could make rules for carrying people from one state to another, they worried, it might one day use that power against the buying and selling of enslaved people across state lines. As with states' rights in Part 8, people judged the decision partly by what they feared or hoped the national government would do with the power.

For the nation. In the long run, the commerce clause became one of the largest sources of national power. Railroads, then telegraph and telephone lines, then trucks, airplanes, and pipelines carried goods and people across state lines, and Congress used the commerce clause to make rules for them. In 1887, for example, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act to regulate the railroads. Part 7 tells how, in the 1930s and after, Congress used the commerce clause for the minimum wage and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and how the Supreme Court has also set limits on it, as in United States v. Lopez (1995). People still disagree about how far the commerce clause should reach. Some believe the national government needs broad power because the economy is national. Others believe a broad reading leaves the states too little. Both sides go back to Marshall's words in this case.

Around the harbor today. New York and New Jersey still share the harbor, and they still have to deal with each other about getting people across it. But now they do it by agreement. As Part 2 explained, in 1921 the two states made a compact, approved by Congress, to create the agency that is now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the PATH trains, the bridges and tunnels between the two states, and the bus terminal in Midtown.

Drills for this part: III.27 The power of the national government: Marbury, McCulloch, Gibbons, U.S. v. Nixon. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

How the states deal with each other

Federalism is not only about the nation and the states. It is also about the fifty states and how they treat one another. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states had acted almost like separate countries, taxing each other's goods and ignoring each other's laws (Chapter 2). Article IV of the Constitution sets rules so that the states work together as one country. Chapter 5 gave a one-line summary of Article IV. Here are its main clauses, one at a time.

Full faith and credit

In plain words: Each state must respect the laws, official records, and court decisions of every other state. (Full faith and credit means complete trust and acceptance. Public acts means laws. Records means official papers, such as birth and marriage certificates. Judicial proceedings means the decisions of courts.)

Here is how this works in daily life. Suppose a worker in Newark wins a court judgment in New Jersey ordering her former employer to pay her $5,000 in unpaid wages. The employer then moves his business, and his bank account, to Brooklyn. The worker does not have to prove her whole case again in New York. A New York court must accept the New Jersey judgment and help her collect it. In the same way, a couple married in Connecticut is married in New York. A birth certificate issued in Ohio or Pennsylvania is accepted when you apply for a job in Queens. An adoption completed in Florida is respected in every state.

The clause has limits. One state does not have to enforce another state's criminal laws. A driver's license is accepted in other states, but that is mainly because the states have agreed to it in their own laws and agreements with one another. And over the years there have been fierce arguments about whether a state must recognize a kind of marriage its own laws did not allow, first over marriages between people of different races and later over marriages between people of the same sex. The Supreme Court settled the largest of those questions under the Fourteenth Amendment: in 1967 for marriages between people of different races, and in 2015 for marriages between people of the same sex. Chapter 8 explains that amendment.

Privileges and immunities

In plain words: When citizens of one state are in another state, they are entitled to the same basic rights as that state's own citizens. (Privileges means rights or benefits. Immunities means protections from certain burdens. The several States means the separate states.)

This clause means that New York may not treat a person from New Jersey as a foreigner. Thousands of people live in New Jersey or Connecticut and work in Manhattan. New York may not forbid them to take jobs, to buy property, to use the state's courts, or to travel through the state. It may not tax them more heavily than its own residents for the same work. The courts have allowed some differences, when the state has a good reason and the matter is not a basic right. For example, state universities, including SUNY and CUNY, charge higher tuition to students who live in other states, and states charge out-of-state hunters more for a hunting license. But on the basics of earning a living and being treated fairly under the law, a state must treat visitors from other states as it treats its own people.

Extradition: returning a person charged with a crime

In plain words: If a person charged with a crime in one state runs away to another state, the second state must send the person back when the governor of the first state asks. (Treason is betraying one's country. A felony is a serious crime. Executive authority here means the governor. Jurisdiction means the authority to try the case.)

Returning a person to the place where he or she is charged with a crime is called extradition. Suppose a man is charged with robbery in Philadelphia and is later arrested in the Bronx. The governor of Pennsylvania sends a formal request to the governor of New York, and New York sends the man back to Pennsylvania to stand trial. New York does not decide whether he is guilty. That is Pennsylvania's job.

The history of this clause is tied to slavery. In 1859, a free Black man named Willis Lago was charged in Kentucky with helping an enslaved woman named Charlotte escape. Lago was living in Ohio. Kentucky asked Ohio's governor to send him back, and Ohio's governor refused. In Kentucky v. Dennison (1861), the Supreme Court said that the governor had a moral duty to send him, but that the federal courts had no power to force a governor to do it. That rule lasted for more than a century. In 1987, in Puerto Rico v. Branstad, the Supreme Court changed it and ruled that federal courts can order a governor to carry out an extradition.

The clause about people escaping slavery

The very next clause of Article IV was one of the protections for slavery written into the Constitution. Chapter 3 explained how it came to be there. It is worth reading here, because it shows how the rules for the states' dealings with each other were bent to protect slavery.

In plain words: If an enslaved person escapes into another state, that state's laws cannot set the person free. The person must be returned to the one who claims to own him or her. (The Constitution never uses the word "slave." A person held to service or labour was a way of saying it without naming it. Discharged means released.)

Under this clause and the Fugitive Slave Acts that Congress passed in 1793 and 1850, a free state such as New York could be required to help return people who had escaped from slavery. Many people in the free states resisted. Several Northern states, New York among them, passed laws to protect people accused of being fugitives, for example by giving them a jury trial. Part 8 returns to what that resistance meant for the argument over "states' rights." The clause stopped having any force when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865 (All the Amendments).

New states

In plain words: Congress may admit new states into the country. But no new state may be carved out of an existing state, and no state may be made by joining two or more states or parts of states, unless the legislatures of those states and Congress all agree. (Admitted means let in. Erected here means set up. Junction means joining.)

Thirteen states ratified the Constitution. Congress has admitted thirty-seven more. The first was Vermont, in 1791. New York had long claimed Vermont's land, and it gave up that claim in 1790, which cleared the way. Maine was separated from Massachusetts, with Massachusetts' consent, in 1820. West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the Civil War and was admitted in 1863. The last two states admitted were Alaska and Hawaii, both in 1959.

Every new state comes in equal to the others, with the same powers and the same two senators. This rule goes back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which Chapter 2 described. The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are not states. Their residents are U.S. citizens, but they have no voting members of Congress. Whether either should become a state is a question people continue to debate.

Section 4 adds one more promise. The United States "shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government," meaning a government in which the people elect representatives to make the laws, and it must protect every state against invasion.

Agreements between states

Part 2 mentioned that states may make agreements with each other, called interstate compacts, with the consent of Congress. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is one. Another example close to home is the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, which runs parks along the Hudson in both states. Compacts let states solve problems that cross state lines without asking the national government to take them over.

Washington, Albany, and City Hall

So far this chapter has talked about "the nation" and "the states." For a person who lives in the Bronx or Staten Island, there is a third level that matters every day: the city. This part brings federalism home. It explains where the city's powers come from, how the state and city governments are set up, and which government handles the everyday things in a New Yorker's life.

Where the city's power comes from

Part 1 explained that the relationship between a state and its cities is not federal. The U.S. Constitution never mentions cities. A city is created by its state and has only the powers its state gives it. New York City in its present shape, with five boroughs, was created by New York State law on January 1, 1898, when Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island were joined into one city.

The New York State Constitution gives cities a large measure of what is called home rule: the power to make their own local laws about their own affairs, such as their streets, their workers, and their local services, as long as those laws do not conflict with state law. The city's own basic law is the New York City Charter. The Charter works like a constitution for the city. It sets up the offices of the mayor, the City Council, and the others, and it says what each one does. The city's voters can change the Charter by voting on proposals at election time.

But in many important matters, Albany has the last word. The state legislature decides how the city's public schools are governed; since 2002 it has given the mayor control of them, renewing that arrangement every few years. State law sets the rules for rent stabilization, the system that limits rent increases for nearly a million New York City apartments. State law sets the minimum wage that city employers must pay; the city does not set its own. When the city wants to raise a new kind of tax, it usually must ask Albany for permission. Just as a valid federal law preempts a state law, a state law can preempt a city law.

The government of New York State

New York State has its own constitution, and like the U.S. Constitution, it divides the state government into three branches. The state government meets in Albany, the state capital, about 150 miles north of New York City.

The executive branch. The governor is the head of the state's executive branch. The governor is elected by the voters of the whole state for a four-year term. New York puts no limit on how many terms a governor may serve. The governor proposes the state budget each year, signs or vetoes bills, commands the state's National Guard when it is not in national service, appoints the heads of state agencies, and can pardon people convicted of state crimes. Three other state officials are also elected by the voters of the whole state: the lieutenant governor, who becomes governor if the governor dies, resigns, or is removed; the attorney general, the state's chief lawyer, who sues on behalf of the state and its people, for example against employers who cheat workers or landlords who break the law; and the state comptroller, who checks how the state spends its money and manages the pension fund for state and local government workers.

The legislative branch. The state's law-making body is called the New York State Legislature. Like Congress, it is bicameral: it has two houses. The State Senate has 63 members. The State Assembly has 150 members. Members of both houses are elected for two-year terms, each from a district of the state. The leader of the Assembly is called the Speaker, as in the U.S. House. A bill must pass both houses and be signed by the governor to become a law, and the legislature can override the governor's veto by a two-thirds vote of each house. Do not mix up the two Senates. The U.S. Senate has 100 members, two from each state, and meets in Washington. The New York State Senate has 63 members and meets in Albany.

The judicial branch. Here is a trap that catches many people, and Chapter 5 warned about it too. In New York State, the court called the Supreme Court is not the highest court. It is a trial court, the court where many cases begin. There is a Supreme Court in every county of the state. It hears divorces, large lawsuits, and, in New York City, cases about serious crimes. Above it is the Appellate Division, which hears appeals. And the highest court in New York State is the Court of Appeals, which meets in Albany. It has seven judges: a chief judge and six associate judges. They are appointed by the governor from a list drawn up by a commission and confirmed by the State Senate, for fourteen-year terms.

So if a court paper says your case is in "Supreme Court, Kings County," your case is starting in a state trial court in Brooklyn. It is not in Washington, and it is not at the top of anything. And when a GED question says "the Supreme Court" with no other words, it means the U.S. Supreme Court.

All the courts in New York City that most people deal with are part of the state court system, even when they have the city's name: Civil Court (which includes Housing Court), Criminal Court, Family Court, and Surrogate's Court, which handles wills and the property of people who have died. The city does not run its own court system.

Counties. New York State is divided into 62 counties. Outside New York City, each county has its own government, with its own legislature and officials. Inside New York City, each of the five boroughs is also a county, though most people never use the county names: the Bronx is Bronx County, Brooklyn is Kings County, Manhattan is New York County, Queens is Queens County, and Staten Island is Richmond County. When the city was formed in 1898, most of the work of the county governments was taken over by the city. But some county offices remain. The most important is the district attorney, the prosecutor who brings criminal charges under state law. The voters of each county elect one, so New York City has five district attorneys, one for each borough.

The government of New York City

New York City's government is also divided between an executive and a legislature, with several other elected offices added.

The mayor is the head of the city's executive branch. The mayor is elected by the voters of all five boroughs for a four-year term, and may serve two terms in a row. The mayor runs the city agencies, such as the Police Department (NYPD), the Fire Department (FDNY), the Department of Sanitation, and the public schools; proposes the city budget; appoints agency heads; and can sign or veto the laws the City Council passes.

The City Council is the city's legislature. It has 51 members, each elected from one council district, usually for a four-year term. The Council passes local laws, approves the city budget, votes on changes in how land may be used, and holds hearings to oversee the city agencies. It chooses one of its own members as Speaker to lead it. It can override the mayor's veto by a two-thirds vote, as Chapter 5 described for the paid sick leave law of 2013.

The public advocate is elected by the voters of the whole city. The public advocate acts as a watchdog for the public: looking into complaints from New Yorkers about city services, and pressing city agencies to do better. The public advocate is also a member of the City Council who may introduce bills but does not vote, and is first in line to act as mayor if the mayor's office becomes empty.

The comptroller (pronounced like "controller") is also elected citywide. The comptroller is the city's chief financial officer: auditing city agencies to see whether money is spent properly, reviewing city contracts, and helping to manage the pension funds that pay retirement benefits to city workers such as teachers, police officers, and sanitation workers.

The five borough presidents are each elected by the voters of one borough. They speak up for their borough's needs, advise the mayor and Council on the budget and on how land is used, and appoint the members of the community boards in their borough.

The community boards are the level of government closest to the people. The city is divided into 59 community districts, and each has a community board of up to 50 unpaid members who live or work in the district. They are appointed by the borough president, and at least half must come from people recommended by the area's City Council members. Members serve two-year terms. Community boards cannot pass laws. They give advice: on plans to change what may be built in the neighborhood, on applications for liquor licenses, and on what the neighborhood needs from the city budget. Their meetings are open to the public, and any resident can speak. For many New Yorkers, the community board is the easiest place to start taking part in government.

Who holds this job at each level

Many test questions ask you to match a job to its level of government. This table puts the three levels side by side.

Two of these are easy to mix up. The public advocate is next in line after the mayor; the comptroller watches the money. And the borough president is not the head of a separate government. The boroughs are parts of one city, with one mayor.

Who handles this

Now the question students are asked most: for a given part of daily life, which government is in charge? The drawing gives the main idea, and the table after it gives the details.

Notice how many rows say more than one level. That is normal. Many programs that people think of as "the city's" are really shared, with rules from the state and money from Washington. When a test question asks "which level," look for the clue in the question. If it asks who makes the rule, the answer may be different from who carries it out or who pays for it.

One morning in the Bronx

Here is one ordinary morning, to show how often a person crosses from one level to another without noticing. A home health aide in the Bronx wakes up and drinks a glass of tap water. The water comes from reservoirs upstate, delivered by a city agency, and it must meet standards set by both national and state law. She walks her son to his public school, run by the city under rules from Albany. On the way she passes a sanitation truck (city) and drops a bill in a mailbox (national). She swipes into the subway, run by the MTA (state). At work, her pay must be at least the New York minimum wage (state), which is higher than the national one. Part of each check goes in taxes to Washington, Albany, and the city. In the evening she drives her mother to the doctor, carrying a New York driver's license (state), and her mother's care is paid for in part by Medicare (national). Before bed, she reads about a hearing at her community board (city) on a new building planned for the corner.

Drills for this part: II.22 Federal, state, or city? · II.23 Who holds this job at each level of government. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

How the balance has shifted

The words of the Constitution about the nation and the states have hardly changed since 1791. But the actual balance between them has changed a great deal. Over two centuries, the national government has taken on far more than the founders imagined, mostly through wars, economic crises, the struggle for civil rights, and money. At times the Supreme Court has also pushed the balance back toward the states. This part tells that story in outline, one period at a time.

Separate areas of work

For most of the 1800s, the national government was small and far away from most people's lives. It ran the post office, collected taxes on imports, sold western land, and kept a small army. Almost everything else, including schools, roads, police, courts, and the rules of work and business, was handled by the states and towns. People who study government call this dual federalism. Dual means two. The idea was that the national government and the states each had their own separate area of work, and each stayed inside its own area. Teachers sometimes compare it to a layer cake: two separate layers, one on top of the other, that do not mix. The line Chief Justice Marshall drew in Gibbons v. Ogden (Part 4), between commerce among the states, which belongs to Congress, and commerce "completely internal" to one state, which belongs to the state, was one of the lines that kept the two areas apart.

The Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment

The biggest question about the nation and the states was whether a state could leave the Union. Before the Civil War, some Southern leaders argued that because the states had made the Union, any state could leave it. Beginning in December 1860, eleven Southern states declared that they had seceded, meaning withdrawn, from the United States, to protect slavery. The national government said they had no right to leave. The Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, settled the question by force. In Texas v. White (1869) the Supreme Court agreed: the Union could not be broken by a state's decision to leave.

After the war came three amendments that changed the relationship between the nation and the states more than anything since 1787. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, is the most important for this chapter:

In plain words: No state may take away the rights of citizens of the United States. No state may take away anyone's life, freedom, or property without fair legal procedures. And no state may treat any person within its borders unequally under the law. (Abridge means cut short, reduce. Due process of law means fair procedures set by law. Equal protection of the laws means the laws must protect everyone equally.)

Look at the first words: "No State shall." The original Bill of Rights limited the national government, the one the Anti-Federalists feared. The Fourteenth Amendment limits the states, and it gives Congress the power to enforce those limits. After 1868, the national government was no longer only a danger to people's rights. It could also be their protector against their own state. Over the following century, the Supreme Court used this amendment to apply most of the Bill of Rights to the states (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 tells the story of the Fourteenth Amendment in full.

Money and the New Deal

In 1913 the Sixteenth Amendment allowed Congress to tax incomes. From then on, the national government had far more money than before, and with more money it could take on more work. Then came the Great Depression, which began in 1929. By the early 1930s about one worker in four was out of work. Banks failed, families lost their homes, and state and city governments ran out of money to help.

President Franklin Roosevelt's program to fight the Depression was called the New Deal. Through it, the national government took on jobs it had never done before. The Social Security Act of 1935 created old-age pensions run by the national government, and it set up unemployment insurance, which each state runs under national rules. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 created the first national minimum wage and limits on child labor. Congress based many of these laws on its power to regulate trade "among the several States," the commerce clause that Part 4 explained with the steamboat case, Gibbons v. Ogden.

At first the Supreme Court struck down several New Deal laws, saying that Congress had gone beyond its powers and into areas reserved to the states. After 1937, the Court changed course and began to accept them. The case that showed how far the change went was Wickard v. Filburn (1942). Roscoe Filburn, a farmer in Ohio, grew about twelve acres more wheat than a national law allowed. He said the extra wheat was only for his own farm, to feed his animals and his family, and was never sold, so it had nothing to do with trade between states. The Court ruled unanimously against him. If many farmers grew their own wheat instead of buying it, the Court reasoned, their choices added together would change the national market for wheat. So Congress could regulate even this. After Wickard, the commerce clause reached almost any economic activity.

Working together, and civil rights

By the middle of the 1900s, the old idea of separate layers no longer described how government worked. The national government, the states, and the cities were all involved in the same programs: highways, housing, welfare, schools, and health care. The national government set goals and gave money; the states and cities ran the programs. This is called cooperative federalism. Teachers who used the layer cake for dual federalism compare this to a marble cake, in which the two colors of batter are swirled together and cannot be pulled apart.

National power was also used to protect civil rights where states refused to. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court ruled that state laws separating Black and white children in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment. When the governor of Arkansas used the state's National Guard to keep nine Black students out of Central High School in Little Rock in 1957, President Eisenhower sent U.S. Army troops to protect them (Chapter 5). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned segregation in restaurants, hotels, and other businesses open to the public. Congress based that law on the commerce clause, since such businesses serve travelers and buy goods from other states, and in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964) the Supreme Court unanimously agreed. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 sent federal officials into Southern counties to make sure Black citizens could register and vote. Chapter 9 tells these stories in detail.

Federal money with conditions

Today, one of the main ways the national government influences the states is with money. A payment from the national government to a state or city for a public purpose is called a grant-in-aid, or simply a federal grant. In recent years, roughly one of every three dollars that state governments spend has come from the national government. The largest share goes to health care for people with low incomes, through Medicaid, and large amounts go to highways, schools, and food assistance.

There are two main kinds of grants. A categorical grant is for one specific purpose, with detailed rules about how it must be spent, such as money for school lunches. A block grant is for a broad area, such as social services, and it lets the state decide more of the details. States usually prefer block grants, because they come with fewer strings attached, as people say, meaning fewer conditions.

Those conditions are what the rest of this section is about. Congress cannot order a state to pass a particular law in an area reserved to the states. But it can offer money with conditions, and a state that wants the money must accept the conditions. The most famous case about this power is South Dakota v. Dole (1987).

In the early 1980s, the states had different drinking ages. Some allowed people to buy beer at 18 or 19, while their neighbors required 21. Young people sometimes drove across a state line to drink legally and then drove home, and there were many deadly crashes. Setting the drinking age is a reserved power of the states, and the Twenty-first Amendment of 1933, which ended Prohibition, gave the states special control over alcohol. So Congress did not pass a national drinking age. Instead, in 1984, it passed a law saying that any state that allowed people under 21 to buy alcohol would lose 5 percent of certain federal highway money.

South Dakota allowed people 19 and older to buy a weak kind of beer. It sued, arguing that Congress was using money to do indirectly what it had no power to do directly. Elizabeth Dole, the Secretary of Transportation, was named in the case because her department handed out the highway money. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 against South Dakota. Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the Court:

In plain words: In this case Congress only gave the states a gentle push, with a small amount of money, to raise their drinking ages above what they would otherwise have picked. (Relatively mild means fairly gentle, compared with other possibilities. Enact means pass into law.)

The Court said Congress may attach conditions to federal money if the conditions are clear, are related to the purpose of the money, serve the general welfare, and do not violate other parts of the Constitution, and if the pressure does not become so strong that a state really has no choice. Safe highways and the drinking age were related, and losing 5 percent of some highway money was not too much pressure. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor dissented. She argued that a drinking age has little to do with building highways, and that the decision let Congress use money to control matters the Constitution leaves to the states. Every state now sets its drinking age at 21.

There is a limit to this power. In 2012, in a case about the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not threaten to take away all of a state's existing Medicaid money if the state refused to join a new expansion of the program. That much pressure, the Court said, left the states no real choice.

The opposite problem also exists. Sometimes the national government orders states and cities to do something, such as meet a clean water standard or make buildings accessible to people with disabilities, without sending the money to pay for it. A requirement like this is called an unfunded mandate. A mandate is an order. State and city officials of both political parties have long complained about them.

New limits on national power

Since the 1990s, the Supreme Court has drawn some lines around national power again.

• United States v. Lopez (1995). Congress had made it a federal crime to carry a gun near a school. A high school student in Texas was charged under that law. The Court ruled 5 to 4 that carrying a gun near a school is not trade between states, so the commerce clause did not give Congress the power to make it a federal crime. It was the first time in almost sixty years that the Court had said a law went beyond the commerce clause. (States, of course, can and do make it a crime under their own laws.)
• New York v. United States (1992) and Printz v. United States (1997). The Court ruled that Congress may not order state governments or state officers to carry out a federal program. The national government may enforce its own laws with its own officers, and it may offer money to win the states' help. But it may not force the state governments to do its work for it. The word for that kind of order is commandeering, which means taking over something for official use. (Chapter 7 describes the New York case.)
• Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (2018). A federal law forbade states to allow betting on sports. The Court ruled that this, too, was commandeering: Congress was telling state legislatures what laws they could pass. After the decision, many states legalized sports betting. New York began allowing it on phones and computers in 2022.

Where state and federal law differ today

Because both levels make laws, they sometimes point in different directions. Here are two examples, described as they stood in the fall of 2026. The facts in them may change, but the questions they raise about federalism will not.

Marijuana. In 2021, New York State made it legal for adults 21 and older to have and use marijuana, and later it began licensing stores to sell it. Many other states have done the same. Under national law, however, marijuana for adult use is still a controlled substance, and selling it is still a federal crime. In 2026 the national government moved marijuana sold through state-licensed medical programs into a less strictly controlled category, and it was still considering whether to do the same for all marijuana. So a store in Manhattan can hold a New York State license and still be breaking federal law. How can both be true at once? The supremacy clause means that the state law cannot make federal law go away. But the state does not have to enforce the federal law for Washington; that would be commandeering. Enforcing it is the national government's job, with its own agents, and since 2014 Congress has repeatedly passed spending laws that forbid the Justice Department to use its money to interfere with states' medical marijuana programs.

Abortion. In 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not protect a right to abortion, overruling its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. The decision returned the question to the states and to Congress. Since then, state laws have differed sharply: some states ban abortion in almost all cases, while others, including New York, protect access to it. People on both sides continue to press for national laws, and the question of which level of government should decide is itself part of the argument.

Other disagreements arise over immigration enforcement, guns, health care, and the environment. In each one, the questions are the ones this chapter has taught: Is this a power the Constitution gives to the nation? Is the national law within that power? If it is, does it preempt the state law? And can the national government require the state to help, or only ask, or offer money?

Two ways of seeing states' rights

The phrase states' rights means the idea that the states should keep strong powers of their own, and that the national government should stay within narrow limits. Few phrases in American history carry more weight. Some people hear it and think of local communities governing themselves. Others hear it and think of slavery and segregation. Both reactions have a basis in history. Here are the two views, each in the words of people who held it, followed by the facts that each view points to.

The first view: government close to home

People who favor strong states make several arguments. First, a government close to home knows local needs better. The people of New York City, Buffalo, and rural Wyoming live very different lives, and one rule from Washington may not fit them all. Second, people can take part more easily in a government that is nearby. It is far easier to speak at a community board or a state legislator's office hours than to be heard in Congress. Third, power divided among fifty states is harder to abuse than power gathered in one place; this was Madison's "double security." And fourth, if you do not like the laws of one state, you can move to another.

In 1991, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, made the same case in a single passage. The case, Gregory v. Ashcroft, was about Missouri's rule that its state judges must retire at seventy. The Court decided that the national law against age discrimination in jobs did not override that rule. O'Connor wrote for the Court:

In plain words: Our system, in which the nation and the states each hold real power, gives the people many advantages. Because power is spread out, government can fit the different needs of a varied people. People have more chances to take part in governing. States can try new ideas. And because people can move from one state to another, states have to compete to keep them, so they pay closer attention to what people want. (Joint sovereigns means two governments, the nation and the states, that each have real power of their own. Decentralized means spread out, rather than held in one center. Heterogenous, more often spelled heterogeneous, means made up of many different kinds of people. Citizenry means all the citizens, and mobile means able to move.) Three of her advantages match arguments above: local needs, taking part, and the freedom to move. Her third advantage, trying new ideas, is the argument Justice Brandeis made, which comes next.

There is one more argument, and the GED test likes it. States can try out new ideas, and the rest of the country can watch to see whether they work. Justice Louis Brandeis made this argument in 1932, in a case about an Oklahoma law that limited who could open an ice business. The majority of the Supreme Court struck the law down. Brandeis disagreed, and he wrote:

In plain words: One of the lucky results of our federal system is that one brave state, if its people want to, can act like a laboratory: it can try out new ideas about society and the economy, and if the idea fails, the rest of the country is not harmed. (Happy incidents here means fortunate results. A laboratory is a place where scientists run experiments. Novel means new.) Because of this sentence, people often call the states "laboratories of democracy."

A dissent is an opinion written by a judge who disagrees with the Court's decision. Brandeis lost this case, but his words became famous, and history offers many examples of what he meant. The territory of Wyoming gave women the vote in 1869, and New York's voters gave women the vote in 1917, before the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the vote nationwide in 1920. Many states had minimum-wage laws before the national government did. Massachusetts passed a plan in 2006 to bring health insurance to nearly all its residents, and it became a model for the national Affordable Care Act in 2010. New York, following a few other states, began paid family leave, which lets workers take paid time off to care for a new baby or a sick relative, in 2018.

Supporters of this view also point out that state power has sometimes protected liberty against the national government. In 1798, when Congress passed the Sedition Act, which made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous and malicious" writing against the government, the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia protested that the law violated the Constitution and the freedom of the press. (Thomas Jefferson secretly wrote the first Kentucky protest, and James Madison wrote Virginia's.) And before the Civil War, several Northern states, including New York, passed laws to protect Black residents from being seized and sent south under the Fugitive Slave Acts. In those cases, state power was used against slavery.

The second view: states' rights as a defense of injustice

People who distrust the phrase "states' rights" point to how it has most often been used. In 1798 the Kentucky legislature had said that a state could judge for itself whether a national law was constitutional. It went further in its second protest, the next year:

In plain words: The right way for the states to deal with national laws that the Constitution does not allow is for the states to declare those laws void. (Nullification means declaring a law to have no force. Those sovereignties means the states. Under colour of that instrument means pretending to act under the authority of the Constitution. Remedy means a way to set a wrong right.)

The idea of nullification, that a state could refuse to obey a national law it judged unconstitutional, did not stay with the Sedition Act. In 1832, South Carolina declared national tariffs, taxes on imported goods, to be void inside the state. President Andrew Jackson declared that no state could cancel a national law, and Congress gave him power to use force to collect the taxes, while also lowering the tariff. South Carolina backed down. Many historians see a deeper worry behind South Carolina's stand: if the national government could override a state on tariffs, it might one day override the slaveholding states on slavery.

In 1860 that worry led to secession. When South Carolina left the Union, its convention published a statement of its reasons. Notice what it complained about. Its main complaint was not that the national government had taken too much power. It complained that Northern states, using their own powers, had refused to help return people who escaped slavery:

In plain words: The free states have grown more and more opposed to slavery, so they have ignored their duties under the Constitution, and the national laws no longer achieve what, in South Carolina's view, the Constitution intended, including the return of people who escaped slavery. (Hostility means strong opposition. The institution of slavery means slavery as an established system. The General Government means the national government. To effect the objects means to accomplish the purposes.) The same document then named New York among the states whose laws, it said, "nullify the Acts of Congress."

A century later, after Brown v. Board of Education, the governors and legislators of several Southern states again used the language of states' rights, this time to keep schools and public places segregated. Some revived nullification under a new name, interposition: the claim that a state could place, or interpose, its own authority between its people and a federal court order it considered unconstitutional. They took the word from Madison's Virginia Resolutions of 1798, which had said that the states had the right "to interpose" against the Alien and Sedition Acts. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), the Supreme Court answered that no state may nullify its decisions. Even so, in January 1963, the new governor of Alabama, George Wallace, said in his inaugural address:

In plain words: I am setting a limit and challenging the national government, which I call a tyranny, to a fight. I promise to keep Black and white people separated, now and for all time. (To toss the gauntlet means to throw down a challenge; a gauntlet was an armored glove that a knight threw on the ground to challenge an enemy. The dots are in the copy of the speech kept by the Alabama Department of Archives and History.) In June 1963, Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block two Black students from enrolling. President John F. Kennedy placed the Alabama National Guard under national command, and the students enrolled that day.

Later that summer, at the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Alabama's governor in his most famous speech:

In plain words: I hope that someday in Alabama, a state with vicious racists and a governor who keeps claiming that the state can ignore federal law, Black children and white children will be able to live together as equals and friends. ("Interposition and nullification" are the states' rights claims explained above.)

People who hold this view say that for much of American history, "states' rights" has meant the right of a state's majority to deny rights to a minority, and that the national government, through the Fourteenth Amendment, the federal courts, and laws such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, has been the protector of people whom their own states would not protect. A government close to home, they say, is also close to the local powerful, who may control it.

Weighing the two views

Notice that both views agree on many facts. States have tried new ideas that later spread. And states have used their powers to defend slavery and segregation. Notice too that the same tool has been used for opposite purposes. Kentucky used states' rights to protest a law against free speech. South Carolina used it to protect slavery. Northern states, including New York, used their own powers to protect people from slavery, and South Carolina complained about that. The question in each case was not only "Who should decide, the nation or the state?" but also "Decide what, and for whose benefit?"

The GED test will not ask you which view is right. It will show you a passage and ask you to recognize the point of view: to tell whether a writer favors more power for the states or for the nation, to find the evidence the writer uses, and to tell a fact from an opinion. "New York gave women the vote in 1917" is a fact. "A single courageous State may... serve as a laboratory" is an opinion, a judgment about what is good in the federal system. When you read a passage about states' rights, ask: who is speaking, when, and what do they want the states to be free to do?

Words to know

Federalism

A system that divides power between a national government and state governments, each with its own powers and each acting directly on the people.

Federal government

In the United States today, another name for the national government in Washington, D.C.

Unitary system

A system in which the central government holds the power and local governments have only the powers it gives them. France is an example.

Confederation

A league of independent states that keep most of the power and give a weak central government only a little, as under the Articles of Confederation.

Delegated (enumerated) powers

Powers the Constitution gives to the national government, mostly listed in Article I, Section 8.

Implied powers

Powers the national government has because they are needed to carry out its listed powers, under the necessary and proper clause.

Reserved powers

Powers not given to the national government and not forbidden to the states, which stay with the states or the people under the Tenth Amendment.

Concurrent powers

Powers that both the national and state governments may use, such as taxing, borrowing, and setting up courts.

Denied (prohibited) powers

Powers the Constitution forbids to the nation (Article I, Section 9), to the states (Article I, Section 10), or to both.

Police power

A state's general power to make laws protecting the health, safety, welfare, and morals of the people.

Eminent domain

The power of a government to take private property for public use, as long as it pays the owner a fair price.

Necessary and proper clause (elastic clause)

The last clause of Article I, Section 8, which lets Congress make the laws needed to carry out its powers.

Supremacy clause

The clause in Article VI that makes the Constitution, national laws made under it, and treaties "the supreme Law of the Land."

Preemption

When a valid higher law pushes aside a lower law that conflicts with it: a federal law over a state law, or a state law over a city law.

Strict and loose construction

Two ways of reading the Constitution. A strict construction reads its powers narrowly (Jefferson on the bank). A loose construction reads them broadly (Hamilton).

Charter

A legal document that creates something and sets its powers, such as the charter of the Bank of the United States or the New York City Charter.

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

The case in which the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could create a national bank under its implied powers, and that a state could not tax it.

Commerce clause

The clause in Article I, Section 8 giving Congress power to regulate trade with other countries, among the states, and with Native American nations.

Commerce

Trade: buying and selling, and the business of moving goods and people from place to place. In Gibbons v. Ogden the Supreme Court ruled that it includes navigation.

Navigation

Running boats and ships on the water, from one place to another.

Transit

Carrying people from one place to another, as ferries, trains, and buses do.

Monopoly

The sole right to sell something or to run a certain kind of business, so that no one else may compete.

License

Official permission to do something that would otherwise be forbidden, such as a driver's license or the federal license to carry on the coasting trade.

Coasting trade

Carrying goods and passengers by water from one American port to another along the coast, rather than across the ocean.

Injunction

A court order telling a person to stop doing something, or to do something.

Retaliatory law

A law made to strike back at another state or country, as New Jersey's laws against New York's steamboat monopoly were.

Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)

The case in which the Supreme Court ruled that commerce includes navigation, that Congress's power over commerce among the states reaches inside a state's borders, and that a federal license beat New York's steamboat monopoly.

Full faith and credit

The rule in Article IV that each state must respect the laws, records, and court decisions of the other states.

Privileges and immunities

The rule in Article IV that a state must treat citizens of other states the same as its own in basic rights.

Extradition

Returning a person charged with a crime to the state (or country) where the charge was made.

Interstate compact

An agreement between states, approved by Congress, such as the one that created the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Home rule

The power the state constitution gives cities and counties to make their own laws about local matters.

Governor and lieutenant governor

The head of a state's executive branch, and the official next in line.

New York State Legislature

The state's law-making body: the State Senate (63 members) and the State Assembly (150 members), meeting in Albany.

New York Court of Appeals

The highest court in New York State, with seven judges.

New York Supreme Court

In New York State, a trial court where many cases begin, not the highest court.

Mayor

The head of a city's executive branch.

City Council

New York City's law-making body, with 51 members.

Public advocate

A citywide elected official who acts as a watchdog for the public and is first in line to act as mayor.

Comptroller

An elected official who audits government spending and helps manage public pension funds. New York State and New York City each have one.

Borough president

An official elected in each of the five boroughs who advises on the budget and land use and appoints community board members.

Community board

One of 59 local boards of unpaid residents that advise the city on land use, licenses, and neighborhood needs.

District attorney

The prosecutor elected in each county who brings criminal charges under state law. New York City has five.

Dual federalism ("layer cake")

The idea that the national and state governments each work in separate areas that do not overlap.

Cooperative federalism ("marble cake")

The idea that the national, state, and local governments work together on the same programs.

Grant-in-aid (categorical grant, block grant)

National money given to states or cities. A categorical grant is for one purpose, with detailed rules. A block grant is for a broad area, with more freedom.

Unfunded mandate

A national requirement placed on states or cities without the money to pay for it.

Commandeering

The national government ordering a state government or its officers to carry out a federal program. The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress may not do this.

Secession

A state's withdrawal from the Union. Eleven Southern states claimed to secede in 1860 and 1861; the Civil War and the Supreme Court rejected the claim.

States' rights

The idea that the states should keep strong powers and the national government should stay within narrow limits.

Nullification

The claim that a state may declare a national law void inside its borders. The Supreme Court and the national government have rejected it.

Interposition

The claim that a state may place its own authority between its people and a federal law or court order. Used to resist school desegregation; rejected by the Supreme Court.

Laboratories of democracy

A name for the states as places where new policies can be tried, from Justice Brandeis's words in 1932.

Dissent

An opinion written by a judge who disagrees with the court's decision.