Dual Federalism History

Federalism has a history since America was created, it has changed through the years substantially. America was structured by a concept of how we live by today known as constitution. The idea of the concept was to establish two governments, national and state. National government has dealt with changes such as regulating interstate commerce, raising armies, declaring war, and coining money. On the other hand state government wanted to regulate intrastate commerce, regulate family law, regulate economic issues, manage elections, education, and handle most criminal laws that exist today. Federalism is known as the “layer-cake federalism due to the fact that the states and national governments have their own ideas and concepts presented to the public. These governments that were establish has their own areas of responsibilities, which in result overlapped. …show more content…
The idea of the “layer-cake” was to build a system of power where leaders can debate against each other to pass or veto laws, this system is called congress. During this time, congress wasn’t ready to function, it wasn’t ready to move forward, they weren’t ready to be a centralized government that would get in its way with the state and local governments. From 1861 through 1890, is the second stage where America is finally understanding how a centralized government should function. Leaders of the Constitution, leaders of federal court powers, Supreme Court activists, and business men worked to eventually increase the power of the national government and move towards a more centralized view of