FEDERAL AND STATE COOPERATION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION

Federalism, as a system of government, is peculiar in that it involves a union of several autonomous political entities for · common purposes which may be achieved through apportioning the sum total of legislative power between a "national" or "central" government, on the one hand, and constituent "states" on the other. In our own federation, a written Constitution has sought to define the functions of both these centers of government, assigning to each certain spheres of influence upon all persons and property within a given territory. At the Constitutional Convention, the committee of detail carefully listed the powers of the National Congress in eighteen brief paragraphs. The central government was to have prescribed powers, while to the states (or the people) were to remain "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states.

A salient feature of the new federal state was the apparent equality of our two governmental centers, to which the later addition of the Tenth Amendment tended to give further emphasis. Thus the individual states, successful in retaining their autonomy, assumed the responsibility of adequately treating the various governmental problems arising within their own frontiers.