American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika страница 40
Название: American Democracy in Context
Автор: Joseph A. Pika
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Зарубежная публицистика
isbn: 9781544345208
isbn:
In the decades that followed, slavery further inflamed relations between the national government and the Southern states. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 proved to be the last straw. He had made it clear in the campaign that he supported efforts at the national level to prohibit slavery. Building on the concept of nullification and the ideas of coequal sovereignty inherent in dual federalism, Southern states now claimed the right of secession, the ability to withdraw from the Union. South Carolina formally exercised that right on December 20, 1860, and eleven others quickly followed suit. Together, the states that seceded formed the Confederate States of America.
The defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War seemed to establish once and for all that states cannot secede, a view endorsed by the Supreme Court in Texas v. White (1869).26 Nonetheless, fringe movements at both ends of the political spectrum continue to embrace the idea of secession. Today, the Texas Nationalist Movement calls for the secession of Texas.27 As of 2009, it claimed that more than 250,000 Texans had signed up in support of that goal.28 Vermont’s secessionist party, called the Second Vermont Republic,29 ran a slate of nine candidates in statewide elections in 2010. If you think such candidates never win, look to Alaska. There a candidate representing the Alaska Independence Party,30 Walter Joseph Hickel, drew enough support to be elected governor in 1990. That party’s 2006 attempt to place an initiative on the ballot calling for Alaska to secede from the United States was blocked by a ruling of the Alaska Supreme Court, which held that any attempt at secession violated the U.S. Constitution.31
The modern Texas Nationalist Movement depicts the federal government as an oppressive force and calls for the secession of Texas.
J. G. Domke / Alamy Stock Photo
The Rise and Fall of National Power in the Wake of the Civil War
The so-called Civil War Amendments to the Constitution—the Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth Amendments (1870)—greatly expanded the power of the national government. They prohibited slavery, prevented states from abridging the right to vote on account of race, and prohibited states from depriving any person of due process of the law or the equal protection of the laws. Each contained an enabling clause, which expanded Congress’s power to enforce the provisions of these amendments.
Although it did not happen immediately, the Fourteenth Amendment also paved the way for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights—in other words, making the provisions of the Bill of Rights binding upon states as well as the federal government (see Chapter 4). Thus, the long-term effect of the Fourteenth Amendment has been to restrict the power of states by preventing them from passing legislation that would violate the First Amendment or other specific provisions of the Bill of Rights.
secession The act of withdrawing from membership in a federation.
The Civil War also expanded the role of the national government in other ways. For example, the cost of the war led to the first federal income tax. The war also led the federal government to become involved in a form of social welfare: creating and maintaining a vast pension system for war veterans and war widows. Nonetheless, the debate between dual federalists and cooperative federalists was far from over, and dual federalists soon began to win important victories from the Supreme Court.
As early as 1873, the Supreme Court began to limit the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment.32 Ten years later, the Court sharply limited the enabling clause power that Congress derived from the Fourteenth Amendment.33 But the biggest boost to states’ rights came in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). By ruling that state-imposed “separate but equal” facilities (such as schools) for whites and blacks did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court gave great leeway to states to impose racial segregation.34 This laid the groundwork for a broad interpretation of states’ rights that allowed states to pass Jim Crow laws and impose barriers to prevent blacks from voting (see Chapter 5).
The Court’s narrow, dual federalist interpretation of the commerce clause from 1895 to 1937 also limited Congress’s ability to regulate the workplace through such things as child labor laws and minimum wage laws. Starting in 1895, the Court embraced the so-called direct–indirect test to delineate congressional power under the commerce clause.35 According to this test, Congress could only use its commerce clause power to regulate those things that had a direct effect on interstate commerce (such as the actual distribution of goods and commodities across state lines). It could not regulate those things that had only an indirect effect on interstate commerce (such as the production of items shipped in interstate commerce). Thus, Congress could not regulate manufacturing, mining, or agriculture, which the Court considered to be the province of states. Attempts by Congress to pass workplace regulations were mostly struck down by the Supreme Court as violations of the Tenth Amendment.36 So, too, were attempts by Congress to regulate the economy.
In the early twentieth century, child labor was commonplace in factories, mines, and mills like this one in Macon, Georgia. The dual federalist Supreme Court struck down attempts by Congress to regulate the practice. These cases were later overturned after the emergence of a cooperative federalist majority on the Court in 1937.
Universal History Archive / Getty Images
The New Deal and the Rise of Cooperative Federalism
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression transformed politics in the United States. The Republican Party had dominated national politics since the Civil War, but the Depression led to a partisan realignment—a lasting shift in voters’ partisan identification. Republicans, who had controlled the White House and maintained solid control of both houses of Congress since 1921, lost control of all three branches of government in the 1932 elections when Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) won the White House and fellow Democrats took control of the House and the Senate. In contrast, the Supreme Court—given the lifetime tenure of its members—remained unchanged, standing as a dual federalist obstacle to Roosevelt’s New Deal.
The Supreme Court Thwarts the New Deal
Roosevelt and his fellow New Deal Democrats greatly expanded the power of the national government. In stark contrast to the laissez-faire economic policies of their predecessors, which held that government should defer to the free market and intervene as little as possible in economic affairs, New Dealers believed government intervention in the economy was an essential step toward recovery.
A centerpiece of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), or NIRA, which authorized the federal government to regulate industry in order to spur recovery. The NIRA also established СКАЧАТЬ