Dead or Alive? The Federalism Revolution and Its Meaning for Public Administration

• Date: 01 September 2009
• Author: Charles R. Wise,Robert K. Christensen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.02041.x
• Published date: 01 September 2009

Big Questions

Facing Public

Administration

Theory

Robert K. Christensen

University of North Carolina–Charlotte

Charles R. Wise

Ohio State University

Dead or Alive?  e Federalism Revolution and Its Meaning

for Public Administration

Robert K. Christensen is an assistant

professor of political science and serves

the master of public administration and

PhD in public policy programs at University

of North Carolina–Charlotte. Interested

in institutional precursors of public and

nonprof‌i t performance, his research focuses

on the intersection of public law, policy,

and public and nonprof‌i t administration.

He is a past recipient of the John A. Rohr

Fellowship.

E-mail: rkchris@uncc.edu

Charles R. Wise is director of the

John Glenn School of Public Affairs and a

professor of public affairs at the Ohio State

University. He has served as managing

editor of

Public Administration Review

and has received the William E. Mosher

and Frederick C. Mosher Award for best

article in the

Public Administration Review

three times.

E-mail: wise.983@osu.edu

Federalism jurisprudence shapes the powers that

public administrators have to achieve policy priorities.

Federalism, however, is neither static nor simplistic as a

concept, and a proper understanding of the environment

in which public administrators work rests on a careful

analysis of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.  e authors

review claims that a 2005 decision, Gonzales v. Raich,

terminated a federalism revolution that had been ushered

in a decade earlier. Does Raich in fact mark the end of

the Supreme Court’s federalism doctrine? Analysis of this

question clarif‌i es whether the past and current Court

has articulated any direction touching on administrators’

powers at both the national and state levels.  e

authors argue that before the federalism revolution is

declared dead or alive, public administration can better

understand the realities of the Supreme Court’s doctrinal

boundaries by examining a more detailed analysis of

jurisprudence for what is says about the foundations

of federalism such as the commerce clause, Fourteenth

Amendment, Tenth Amendment, Eleventh Amendment,

spending clause, and statutory interpretation issues.

Federalism is explicitly covered in many current

textbooks on public administration (e.g.,

Milakovich and Gordon 2007; Rosenbloom

and Kravchuck 2005; Starling 2007) as a funda-

mental part of the operating environment of public

administration.  omas Anton (1989, 3) def‌i nes

federalism as the system of rules that divides public

responsibilities among various units of govern-

ment.  e U.S. Supreme Court has come to play an

important role in articulating that system of rules.  e

Supreme Court’s federalism

decisions are especially impor-

tant in understanding what

powers public managers have

to achieve policy priorities in

the current context of devolved

government (Wise 1998).

 e Supreme Court’s role in

def‌i ning the framework of our

federal system has not always

been so active. Many summarize the Court’s federal-

ism doctrines as following a trend that has consist-

ently favored national authority since the 1800s.1

While there were several exceptions to this trend prior

to 1937,2 in that year, the Court, in National Labor

Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin (301 U.S. 1),

returned with fervor to its practice of solidifying the

reach of congressional power.  e Court’s stance on

federalism from 1937 to 1995—with a notable com-

merce clause exception of National League of Cities

v. Usery, which was later overturned in Garcia v. San

Antonio Metropolitan Transportation Authority3—has

been called a period of “Constitution in exile.”  e

decision in Garcia particularly disappointed federalism

proponents because, in overturning Usery, the Garcia

majority stated that the principal limit on Congress’s

commerce power to regulate state functions is to be

found in state participation in the legislative process

of Congress, and not the federal courts (469 U.S. 556

[1984]).  at pronouncement seemed to crystallize

the “Constitution in exile.”  is refers to the Supreme

Court’s unwillingness “to enforce constitutional limits

on national power vis-à-vis the states” (Baker and

Young 2001, 75). Many scholars concluded that the

Court had merely abandoned its role in interpreting

the Constitution with regard to what it means for the

respective powers of the federal government and state

governments (Cooper 1988; Van Alstyne 1985).

However, the Court’s posture changed in the 1990s.

In a series of cases, the Supreme Court signaled a

change in the legal basis of intergovernmental rela-

tions that portended a shift in

the environment of public

administration (Dinan 1998;

Rosenbloom and Ross 1998;

Wise 1998). In 1995, the Su-

preme Court handed down one

particularly notable decision,

United States v. Lopez (514 U.S.

549 [1995]), that seemingly

broke with the decades-long

trend of consistently af‌f‌i rming

 e Supreme Court’s federalism

decisions are especially

important in understanding

what powers public managers

have to achieve policy priorities

in the current context of

devolved government.

920 Public Administration Review • September | October 2009