Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T04:41:15.573Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Rehnquist Court and the Political Dynamics of Federalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2004

J. Mitchell Pickerill  and
Cornell W. Clayton
J. Mitchell Pickerill
Affiliation:
J. Mitchell Pickerill is assistant professor of political science at Washington State University (mitchp@wsu.edu)
Cornell W. Clayton
Affiliation:
Cornell W. Clayton is professor of political science at Washington State University (cornell@mail.wsu.edu)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Rehnquist Court's federalism decisions have sparked contentious debate about the role of the Court in the American political system. This article examines the reasons behind the Court's revival of federalism and the controversy it has produced. The first part reviews the normative jurisprudential debate over the Court's role as it has been cast in the legal academy. In the second part, we turn to an historical-empirical, or “political regimes,” framework for understanding the role of the Supreme Court. Although this framework provides a better explanation of the Rehnquist Court's foray into federalism, the connections between this approach and normative jurisprudential debates remain important, and we explore them in the final section. The Court's recent jurisprudence on federalism reflects both consensus and division within the current political regime—consensus that federalism is an important value, but division over how best to protect that value. We argue that competing jurisprudential theories over the role of the Court illustrate these political divisions. Thus, this article highlights the special insights political scientists bring to the subject, but also demonstrates how the two approaches can be usefully combined to provide a more robust understanding of the Court's role in the American political system.The authors thank Richard Brisbin, John Dinan, Mark Graber, Ashley Grosse, Jennifer Hochschild, Tom Keck, David O'Brien, Bob Turner, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions along the way.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , June 2004 , pp. 233 - 248
Copyright
© 2004 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ackerman, Bruce. 1991. We the People. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Adamany, David. 1980. The Supreme Court's role in critical elections. In Realignment in American Politics: Toward a Theory, eds. Bruce A. Campbell and Richard J. Trilling. Austin: University of Texas Press, 229–59.
Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena. 515 U.S. 200 (1995).
Alden v. Maine. 527 U.S. 706 (1999).
Balkin, Jack M., and Sanford Levinson. 2001. Understanding the constitutional revolution. Virginia Law Review 87:6, 1045–109.Google Scholar
Beck, Paul Allen. 1976. Communications: Critical elections and the Supreme Court: Putting the cart after the horse. American Political Science Review 70:3, 930–2.Google Scholar
Bickel, Alexander M. 1962. The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett. 531 U.S. 356 (2001).
Brest, Paul, Sanford Levinson, J. M. Balkin, and Akhil Reed Amar, eds. 2000. Process of Constitutional Decisionmaking: Cases and Materials. 4th ed. Gaithersburg, Md.: Aspen Publishers.
Budge, Ian, David Robertson, and Derek Hearl, eds. 1987. Ideology, Strategy, and Party Change: Spatial Analyses of Post-War Election Programmes in 19 Democracies. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Burnham, Walter Dean. 1970. Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: W. W. Norton.
Calabresi, Steven G. 1995. A government of limited and enumerated powers: In defense of United States v. Lopez. Michigan Law Review 94:3, 752–831.Google Scholar
Calabresi, Steven G. 2001. Federalism and the Rehnquist Court: A normative defense. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 574:1, 24–36.Google Scholar
Cammisa, Anne Marie. 1995. Governments as Interest Groups: Intergovernmental Lobbying and the Federal System. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers.
Chen, Paul. 2003. The federalism decisions: The judicial counterpart to the conservative devolutionary agenda. Paper presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 27 August–1 September.
Choper, Jesse H. 1980. Judicial Review and the National Political Process: A Functional Reconsideration of the Role of the Supreme Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Choper, Jesse H. 2003. Taming Congress's power under the Commerce Clause: What does the near future portend? Arkansas Law Review 55:4, 731–93.Google Scholar
Cigler, Beverly A. 1993. Challenges facing fiscal federalism in the 1990s. PS: Political Science and Politics 26:2, 181–6.Google Scholar
City of Boerne v. Flores. 521 U.S. 507 (1997).
Clayton, Cornell W. 1992. The Politics of Justice: The Attorney General and the Making of Legal Policy. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe.
Clayton, Cornell W. 1994. Law, politics, and the New Federalism: State attorneys general as national policymakers. Review of Politics 56:3, 525–53.Google Scholar
Clayton, Cornell W. 1999. Law, politics, and the Rehnquist Court: Structural influences on Supreme Court decision making. In The Supreme Court in American Politics: New Institutionalist Interpretations, ed. Howard Gillman and Cornell Clayton. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 151–77.
Clayton, Cornell W. 2002. The supply and demand sides of judicial policy-making (Or, why be so positive about the judicialization of politics?). Law and Contemporary Problems 65:3, 69–85.Google Scholar
Clayton, Cornell W., and David May. 2000. A political regimes approach to the analysis of legal decisions. Polity 32:2, 233–52.Google Scholar
Clayton, Cornell W., and Jack McGuire. 2001. Litigation strategy and policymaking in the U.S. Supreme Court. Journal of Law and Public Policy 11:1, 17–34.Google Scholar
Colker, Ruth, and James J. Brudney. 2001. Dissing Congress. Michigan Law Review 100:1, 80–144.Google Scholar
College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board. 527 U.S. 666 (1999).
Conlan, Timothy J. 1991. And the beat goes on: Intergovernmental mandates and preemption in an era of deregulation. Publius 21:3, 43–69.Google Scholar
Conlan, Timothy, and David R. Beam. 1992. Federal mandates: The record of reform and future prospects. Intergovernmental Perspective 18:4, 7–11.Google Scholar
Copeland, Claudia. 1996. Reinventing the Environmental Protection Agency and EPA's water programs. Congressional Research Service Report. 22 March, 96–283 ENR. Available at www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/water/h20-20.cfm. Accessed on 26 March 2002.
Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council. 530 U.S. 363 (2000).
Cushman, Barry. 1998. Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dahl, Robert. 1957. Decision-making in a democracy: The Supreme Court as a national policy-maker. Journal of Public Law 6 (Fall), 279–95.Google Scholar
Devins, Neal. 2002. The federal-rights nexus: Explaining why Senate Democrats tolerate Rehnquist Court decision making but not the Rehnquist Court. University of Colorado Law Review 73:4, 1307–36.Google Scholar
Dinan, John. 2003. The consequences of the Rehnquist Court's federalism decisions. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 3–6 April.
Donahue, John D. 1997. The Disunited States. New York: Basic Books.
Dunne, Finley Peter. 1901. Mr. Dooley's Opinions. New York: Harper.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1996. Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dye, Thomas R. 1990. American Federalism: Competition Among Governments. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.
Ely, John Hart. 1980. Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Epstein, Lee, and Jack Knight. 1997. The Choices Justices Make. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.
Eskridge, William N., Jr. 1993. The judicial review game. Northwestern University Law Review 88:1, 382–95.Google Scholar
Ferejohn, John. 2002. Judicializing politics, politicizing law. Law and Contemporary Problems 65:3, 41–68.Google Scholar
Fisher, Louis. 1988. Constitutional Dialogues: Interpretation as Political Process. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank. 527 U.S. 627 (1999).
Fried, Charles 1991. Order and Law: Arguing the Reagan Revolution: A Firsthand Account. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Friedman, Barry. 2001. The countermajoritarian problem and the pathology of constitutional scholarship. Northwestern University Law Review 95:Spring, 933–54.Google Scholar
Funston, Richard. 1975. The Supreme Court and critical elections. American Political Science Review 69:3, 795–811.Google Scholar
Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority. 469 U.S. 528 (1985).
Gates, John B. 1987. Partisan realignment, unconstitutional state policies, and the U.S. Supreme Court, 1837–1964. American Journal of Political Science 31:2, 259–80.Google Scholar
Gates, John B. 1989. Supreme Court voting and realigning issues: A microlevel analysis of Supreme Court policymaking and electoral realignment. Social Science History 13:3, 255–83.Google Scholar
Gates, John B. 1992. The Supreme Court and Partisan Realignment: A Macro- and Microlevel Perspective. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
Gillman, Howard. 2002. How political parties can use the courts to advance their agendas: Federal courts in the United States, 1875–1891. American Political Science Review 96:3, 511–24.Google Scholar
Graber, Mark A. 1993. The nonmajoritarian difficulty: Legislative deference to the judiciary. Studies in American Political Development 7:1, 35–73.Google Scholar
Gregory v. Ashcroft. 501 U.S. 452 (1991).
Greenhouse, Linda. 2001a. The High Court's target: Congress. The New York Times, 25 February, Section 4:3.
Greenhouse, Linda 2001b. Will the Court reassert national authority? The New York Times, 30 September, Section 4:14.
Haider, Donald H. 1974. When Governments Come to Washington: Governors, Mayors, and Intergovernmental Lobbying. New York: Free Press.
Hamilton, Marci A. 2001. The elusive safeguards of federalism. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 574:1, 93–103.Google Scholar
Hammer v. Dagenhart. 247 U.S. 251 (1918).
Hanson, Russell L. 1999. Intergovernmental relations. In Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, ed. Virginia Gray, Russell L. Hanson, and Herbert Jacob. 7th ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 32–65.
Henig, Jeffrey R. 1985. Public Policy and Federalism: Issues in State and Local Politics. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Hollings, Robert L. 1996. Reinventing Government: An Analysis and Annotated Bibliography. Commack, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers.
Jacobson, Gary C. 2003. Partisan polarization in presidential support: The electoral connection. Congress and the Presidency 30:1, 1–35.Google Scholar
Kendall, Douglas, and Charles Lord 1998. The Takings Project: A critical analysis and assessment of the progress so far. Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 25:2, 509–87.Google Scholar
Kettl, Donald F. 1994. Reinventing Government? Appraising the National Performance Review. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents. 528 U.S. 62 (2000).
Kincaid, John. 1998. The devolution tortoise and the centralization hare. New England Economic Review (May/June), 13–40.Google Scholar
Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, Richard I. Hofferbert, and Ian Budge. 1994. Parties, Policies, and Democracy. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
Kramer, Larry D. 2000. Putting the politics back into the political safeguards of federalism. Columbia Law Review 100:1, 215–93.Google Scholar
Kramer, Larry D. 2001. The Supreme Court 2000 term: Foreword. Harvard Law Review 115:4, 5–168.Google Scholar
Lasser, William. 1985. The Supreme Court in periods of critical realignment. Journal of Politics 47:4, 1174–87.Google Scholar
Lasser, William 1988. The Limits of Judicial Power: The Supreme Court in American Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Leach, Richard H. 1970. American Federalism. New York: W. W. Norton.
Liebschutz, Sarah F., ed. 2000. Managing Welfare Reform in Five States: The Challenge of Devolution. Albany, N.Y.: Rockefeller Institute Press.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. 2000. Disputing male sovereignty: On United States v. Morrison. Harvard Law Review 114:1, 135–77.Google Scholar
Morris, Thomas. 1987. States before the U.S. Supreme Court: State attorneys general as amicus curiae. Judicature 70:5, 298–305.Google Scholar
Murphy, Walter F. 1962. Congress and the Court: A Case Study in the American Political Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Murphy, Walter F. 1964. Elements of Judicial Strategy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nagel, Robert F. 1996. The future of federalism. Case Western Reserve Law Review 46:3, 643–61.Google Scholar
Nathan, Richard P. 1996. The devolution revolution: An overview. In Rockefeller Institute Bulletin. Albany, N.Y.: Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, 5–13.
National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. 301 U.S. 1 (1937).
National League of Cities v. Usery. 426 U.S. 833 (1976).
New York v. United States. 505 U.S. 144 (1992).
Nivola, Pietro S. 2002. Tense Commandments: Federal Prescriptions and City Problems. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
O'Brien, David M. 1988. The Reagan judges: His most enduring legacy? In The Reagan Legacy: Promise and Performance, ed. Charles O. Jones. Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House Publishers, 60–101.
Office of Legal Policy, Department of Justice. 1988. The Constitution in the year 2000: Choices ahead in constitutional interpretation. Report to the Attorney General.
Osborne, David, and Ted Gaebler. 1992. Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Parden v. Terminal Railway. 377 U.S. 184 (1964).
Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Company. 491 U.S. 1 (1989).
Peterson, Paul E. 1995. The Price of Federalism. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Pickerill, J. Mitchell. 2003. Leveraging federalism: The real meaning of the Rehnquist Court's federalism jurisprudence for states. Albany Law Review 66:3, 823–33.Google Scholar
Pickerill, J. Mitchell 2004. Constitutional Deliberation in Congress: The Role of Judicial Review in a Separated System. Durham: Duke University Press.
Pomper, Gerald M., ed. 1980. Party Renewal in America: Theory and Practice. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Posner, Paul L. 1997. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act: 1996 and beyond. Publius 27:2, 53–71.Google Scholar
Posner, Paul L. 1998. The Politics of Unfunded Mandates: Whither Federalism? Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Printz v. United States. 521 U.S. 898 (1997).
Reagan, Ronald. 1987. Executive Order No. 12612 on federalism. Federal Register 52:210, 685–8, 30 October.Google Scholar
Rich, Robert F., and William D. White, eds. 1996. Health Policy, Federalism, and the American States. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press.
Rivlin, Alice M. 1992. Reviving the American Dream: The Economy, the States, and the Federal Government. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Rotunda, Ronald. 2003. The implications of the new Commerce Clause jurisprudence: An evolutionary or revolutionary court? Arkansas Law Review 33:4, 795–846.Google Scholar
Sapiro, Virginia, Steven J. Rosenstone, and the National Election Studies. 2001. Cumulative Data File, 1948–2000. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies.
Schroeder, Christopher H. 2001. Causes of the recent turn in constitutional interpretation. Duke Law Journal 51:1, 307–61.Google Scholar
Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida. 517 U.S. 44 (1996).
Sherry, Suzanna. 1999. Some targets were larger than others. The Washington Post, 4 July, B4.
South Dakota v. Dole. 483 U.S. 203 (1987).
Sunstein, Cass R., and Richard A. Epstein, eds. 2001. The Vote: Bush, Gore, and the Supreme Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tushnet, Mark. 1999. Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tushnet, Mark 2000. What is the Supreme Court's New Federalism? Oklahoma City University Law Review 25 (Fall), 927–43.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark 2003. The New Constitutional Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
United States v. Darby. 312 U.S. 100 (1941).
United States v. E. C. Knight Company. 156 U.S. 1 (1895).
United States v. Lopez. 514 U.S. 549 (1995).
United States v. Morrison. 529 U.S. 598 (2000).
U.S. Senate. 2000a. Congressional Record. 106th Cong., 2d sess., 27 July. Vol. 146, pt. 100, rec. S 7758.
U.S. Senate 2000b. Congressional Record. 106th Cong., 2d sess., 27 July. Vol. 146, pt. 100, rec. S 7598.
Van Alstyne, William. 2001. When can a state be sued? Popular Government 33:3, 44–46.Google Scholar
Waltenburg, Eric N., and Bill Swinford. 1999. Litigating Federalism: The States Before the U.S. Supreme Court. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Wechsler, Herbert. 1961 [1954]. The political safeguards of federalism: The role of the states in the composition and selection of the national government. In Principles, Politics, and Fundamental Law. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 49–82.
Whittington, Keith E. 2001. Taking what they give us: Explaining the Court's federalism offensive. Duke Law Journal 51:1, 477–520.Google Scholar
Whittington, Keith E. 2003. Legislative sanctions and the strategic environment of judicial review. The International Journal of Constitutional Law 1:3, 446–74.Google Scholar
Wickard v. Filburn. 317 U.S. 111 (1942).
Yoo, John C. 1997. The judicial safeguards of federalism. University of Southern California Law Review 70 (July), 1311–405.Google Scholar