Evolution Of Federalism In America

Federalism in America has changed over the years. The United States has a federal for of government where the power of government is shared among the state and national governments. How the power is distributed between the state and national governments is found in the Constitution under the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, of to the people.” According to this amendment, anything not explicitly stated within the Constitution is left up to the states to decide.
There have been paramount events that have shifted more power to the national government and less to the states; the first is the Supreme Court case of McCulloch v. Maryland (Edwards, Wattenberg, and Lineberry 76). The case was brought to court because in the state of Maryland a law was passed

Both forms of government share the same realm of authority, and with national law being supreme law of the land; national government has leverage over the states. The national government exercises its authority through the use of money in the form of grants-in-aid to increase their influences on states. For example, the national government gives money to state’s highway if their minimum drinking age at 21 years old (Edwards, Wattenberg, and Lineberry). The federal courts will also impose unfunded mandates on to states, which are orders from the national government to end school segregation, increase test scores in high school, or to start a program to expand mental health care, but the state receives no money to do said