How State and Local Governments Influence Federal Legislation

State and local governments influence the federal legislature by: All state governments are modelled after the federal government and they comprise of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Most state and local government officials usually seek to influence the content of national policies especially in generating intergovernmental lobby (Steier, 1985). There is increase of professionalism in state and local governments which give units the basic knowledge and ability to meet with the legislators and provide information which may influence legislation. Also, the growth in federal grants to state and local governments enables programs to have potential for the federal government to regulate the behavior of the state and local governments. In addition, many regulations and requirements that federal programs impose on the states and localities are sometimes open to modification, give discretion, and power to state and local officials.

Local government is commissioned to its state constitution and it is subject to the legal environment created by the state’s structure and laws just like the way the state government should not conflict with the federal law. State governments is a reflection of the federal government since it has an elected head of the executive branch who is the governor, a self-governing judiciary, and a commonly elected legislative division.

In whether justices be elected to office or appointed is: Justices should be elected instead of appointed. This is because members of congress usually engage in agenda setting since they want to satisfy their constituents (Arnold, 2004). Therefore since many constituents are concerned with crime, it is easy to please the constituent by focusing on crime. For elected offic...

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...tes approves appointments of judges. 2) May remove judges through impeachment, and 3) Creates lower courts. The Executive Branch is given the power to carry out the laws and has some checks over the Legislative Branch like: 1) Ability to call special sessions of Congress. 2) Can recommend legislation, and 3) can appeal to the people concerning legislation (Arnold, 2004). The Judicial branch has the power to interpret the laws and check over the Executive branch like: Courts can judge executive actions to be unconstitutional through the power of judicial review

References

Arnold, A. (2004). About America. How the United States Is Governed

Marion, N & Oliver, W. (2012). The Public Policy of Crime and Criminal Justice, Second Edition.

Steier, R. (1985). Computer Crime and Security: A Congressional Retrospective. Communications Of The ACM, 28(12), 1275-1276.