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or refusal of some member States to enforce the laws and treaties of the
central government.
The durability of American federalism, according to Lord Bryce, should
also be attributed to the fact that it tends to promote political stability. In
framing a federal system, the architects of the Constitution faced an eternal dilemma: how to balance power between the central and state governments; or as Bryce put it colorfully in an astronomical metaphor: how
‘‘to keep the centrifugal and centripetal forces in equilibrium, so that neither the planet states shall fly off into space, nor the sun of the central
government draw them into its consuming fires.’’ The advantage of the
constitutional edifice built by the Framers is that it solved the problem by
giving the national government a direct authority over all citizens, irrespective of the State governments, thereby safely leaving broad powers
in the hands of State authorities. ‘‘And by placing the Constitution above
both the national and State governments,’’ observed Bryce, ‘‘it has referred
the arbitrament of disputes between them to an independent body [i.e.,
the Supreme Court], charged with the interpretation of the Constitution,
a body which is to be deemed not so much a third authority in the government as a living voice of the Constitution, the unfolder of the mind of
the people whose will stands expressed in that supreme instrument.’’
Tocqueville’s and Bryce’s praise of American federalism (and particularly of American local government) called the earnest attention of European and British scholars and public men to national federalism as an
idea, a concept, a theory. And presently America’s pattern of federalism
was emulated in very different countries—sometimes with modest success, sometimes with no success at all. However that may be, and whether
or not federalism is a pattern for good government everywhere, certainly it was the best design for the new American Republic that can be
imagined.
The Future of Federalism
The practical operation of the principles of federalism and of separation
of powers is diminished today from what most of the Framers desired.
Because of the intense jealousy among the States, the deep emotional attachment of the people to their local communities and their States, and