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Discuss the relationship between state and federal government
Relationship between state and federal government
The bill of rights
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Nationalizing Civil Liberties
What does the term Selective Incorporation mean? It is a concept securing that State Government cannot pass laws that would take away the rights ensured to all Americans by the Bill Of Rights. The Bill Of Rights protect civil liberties of citizens. In the beginning, the Bill Of Rights was created with the purpose to protect people from a big national government, not from the states. Throughout the Selective Incorporation The Bill Of Rights not only apply to the national government but also it applies to the states too. This concept lead people to understand that their freedoms are protect. Government power cannot infringe people’s civil liberties, no matter if it is the national or the state government.
Miranda
v. Arizona (1966) 5th amendment Ernesto Miranda was arrested after being identified by a crime victim, but police officers that were questioning him did not inform Miranda of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The Supreme Court agreed, and decided that the police did not take proper steps to inform Miranda of his rights as stated on the 5th Amendment of the Constitution. Part of the Fifth Amendment says: “shall no person be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. That is exactly why the Court decided in the case Miranda v. Arizona was unconstitutional that Miranda was not informed of his rights and was self-incriminated without process of law. This case was important to the evolution of a National concept of civil liberties in the United States because it protect the people’s freedom from being less informed by their locals and states governments. It is surprising how long it took to be made mandatory to the states and local government to follow and to inform people of a right that has been written on the Constitution long ago. The Miranda v. Arizona case served to inform citizens about one of their many civil liberties, but it is my belief that most Americans still do not fully acknowledge their rights.
One way that the constitution can guard against tyranny is with Federalism. Federalism is the distribution of powers between the state and the federal government. This prevents both the state and the federal government from having too much power. For example, in Doc A, it says that only states can set up schools, but only the federal government can set up post offices. This makes it
The dictionary definition of of the word containment means the action or policy of preventing the expansion of a hostile country or influence. The United States during the the Cold War used the Containment policy to prevent the USSR for pushing its communism throught Europe and the world.
...re than one government’s protection. The state governments protect their own states while the federal government protects the whole country.
Now the question is how has it affected our present day lives. Over time, the fourteenth amendment has been used to cover almost all of the Bill of Rights. These rights are the standard for all US citizens and are protected by the Federal government. Selective Incorporation is thought to cover the first through eighth amendments, with the ninth and tenth being exclusively guaranteed by the Federal government. A present day example of this debate is that of the 2nd amendment. The right to bear arms is a critical issue when thinking of Selective incorporation.
Texas and Federal Constitutions contain the principles needed for a representative democratic government and both arose from different historical situations; for instance, the U.S. Constitution was made to replace the Articles of Confederation, a weak decentralized form of national government with no president or taxes, which made the government not powerful enough to start a war. The U.S. Constitution was made to improve these weaknesses by proposing a degree of centralization which increased government power. On the other hand, Texas Constitution was made to reverse or avoid the ideas of the U.S. Constitution. On one part, the U.S. Constitution wanted to empower government action whereas the Texas Constitution wanted to weaken government action. The Texas Constitution is more geared toward protecting people’s rights whereas the U.S. Constitution protects the nation’s interest. The Texas Constitution has been amended more than 300 times whereas the US Constitution includes the Bill of Rights and the subsequent
Some examples of these are indicated in Document A. It describes that the central government can, “regulate trade, conduct foreign relations and declare war.” Meanwhile, the states can, “set up local governments, hold elections and establish schools.” As James Madison said, “The different governments will each control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.” What James Madison is trying to say is that the central and state governments have enough power that they don’t control everything. The central government has enough power to help some of the country’s major needs and the state government has enough power to help the state’s needs because the state’s needs may be more specific. From this, you may conclude, that dividing powers between the central and state governments prevents tyranny. The first guard against tyranny was Federalism, which means a system of government in which power is divided between a federal government and state government. The guard of federalism shows one way in the constitution when they set up the compound government to make sure that the federal government doesn’t get too much power. The second way is when some responsibilities are given to the state government so that they can share the power equally. Federalism protects against tyranny because it ensures that the federal government doesn’t have too much say in
In Cooper’s case, the court held that the exclusionary rules are an “essential part” of the Fourth Amendment, and that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which states that “No state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”, meaning that the federal exclusionary rule applies to the states. The exclusionary that is applied in the Federal courts should also be applied in State court
...ers. It also defined what power a state has over a legitimate federal institution. For example, a state may not use its power to impede the operation of a federal institution by taxing its activities, but still has the authority to collect property tax from a federal institution.
The Significance: Prior to this ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court had been hesitant to obstruct with the rights of states to create political boundaries in their own towns and cities. This case nevertheless confirmed that states can’t use their power to deprive citizens of their voting rights which are guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment.
The national government was still too weak and the states were unrestrained. It is believed that it would have been more important to limit the states than the federal government. The first attempt to limit the states came with the Fourteenth Amendment and sought to ensure that the slaves freed under the Thirteenth Amendment would not be denied full protection of the law. Despite the clarity of the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868, it was not until 1925 that the Supreme Court actually applied the Fourteenth Amendment to the states in the case of Gitlow v. New York, when it ruled with the state of New York against Gitlow who was advocating for the overthrow of the government. This process of selective incorporation is not smooth and continues to progress in surges with the most recent ruling in 2010 in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, which incorporated the Second Amendment by striking down a gun control ordinance in Chicago, while reaffirming the ownership restrictions adopted in 2008. The Third, Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments remain
The final clause of the first section of the fourteenth amendment explains, "nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." 2 The 1976 ruling of Gregg v....
The central question of federalism is “Who should do what?” National government supporters believe only a strong central government is capable of ensuring the rights and liberties of its citizens. States’ rights advocates argue for limiting the implied powers of the national government. Federalism was a compromise for the conflict of states’ rights versus central authority. Federalism divides power between the national and the lower level governments with each having distinct powers that the other cannot override. (pg. 46)
In creating the Constitution, the states had several different reactions, including a rather defensive reaction, but also an understanding reaction. As a document that provided the laws of the land and the rights of its people. It directs its attention to the many problems in this country; it offered quite a challenge because the document lent itself to several views and interpretations, depending upon the individual reading it. It is clear that the founders’ perspectives as white, wealthy or elite class, American citizens would play a role in the creation and implementation of The Constitution.
Throughout American history, our civil liberties as American citizens have evolved immensely. For example, the first ten amendments in the U.S. Constitution are referred to as the “The Bill of Rights,” which contains some of the most cherished civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and religion. These civil liberties however, did not originally apply to state governments or institutions the state established. The Bill of Rights focused solely on what the national government could not do, allowing state governments to do whatever they wanted. For example, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire supported Congregationalist ministers with tax payer dollars for decades. After the Civil War, civil liberties expanded, because three new amendments were added: the Thirteenth, abolishing slavery, the Fourteenth, which redefined civil liberties and rights, and the Fifteenth, which allowed adult, male citizens to vote. The due process clause (contained in the Fourteenth Amendment) became one of the most important civil liberties, because it applied the language of the Fifth Amendment to state governments, proclaiming that they could not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....
The Constitution is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “the basic written set of principles and precedents of federal government in the US, which came into operation in 1789 and has since has been modified by twenty-seven amendments”. The Constitution was originally drafted in Philadelphia in 1787, a year later it was ratified, and in 1789 was put into working order and referred to as the new government. However some states did not conform as quickly and felt there was a “lack of specific guarantees of personal liberty” (Silberdick Feinberg, 2015). To address these concerns government representatives from state and federal legislature met to develop better transparency on the limitations of federal government and protection