Taking What They Give Us: Explaining the Court’s Federalism Offensive

For several years now, the Supreme Court has disquieted observers and commentators by reasserting the presence of constitutional limitations on national power resulting from the federal structure of the American political system. Although not quite amounting to a revolution in American constitutional law, the recent federalism cases are nonetheless striking. They are, of course, most remarkable because they reverse over fifty years of nearly uninterrupted deference to the national government in matters relating to federalism and the structural limits on the powers of the central government. With the exception of an ill-fated attempt to identify such limits in 1976, under the guidance of then–Associate Justice William Rehnquist, the