Federalism in America: An Encyclopedia

A famous report on the British constitution once summarised it as declaring that “There shall be a Parliament and it shall do whatever it wishes”. They order these things better in the USA, where the respective powers of the Federal and State governments have been carefully set out in the Constitution; carefully, but not unambiguously, for, as the Preface points out, the Constitutional History of the USA has been one of repeated conflicts between the two levels of government, conflicts which at one point provoked the most destructive war in American history.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that...