Page 151 - DPOL202_COMPARATIVE_POLITICS_AND_GOVERNMENT_ENGLISH

Comparative Politics and Government

Notes 7. To promote the progress of science and useful arts,
8. To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court,
9. To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against
the law of nations,
10. To declare war,
11. To provide and maintain a navy; to make rules for the government and regulation of the land
and naval forces; to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union,
suppress insurrections, and repel invasions, and
12. To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing
powers.
The last requirement of a federal system in the United States is fulfilled by the federal judiciary. The
Supreme Court is the final interpreter of the Constitution. As such, it is this court which decides any
dispute between the Centre and the States. Art. III. Sec.2 of the Constitution provides that to all
controversies to which the United States shall be a party, to controversies between two or more
States, between a State and a citizen of another State, between citizens of different States, between
citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants of different States, and between a State, or the
citizens thereof foreign States, citizens or subjects, the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction.”
Undoubtedly, the United States furnishes a brilliant instance of a federal system, but its evaluation
in the present form reveals that much has now changed what was originally designed. As the
growth of centralism has been an inevitable feature of every federal system, the American federation
has been no exception. With the advance of time and change of conditions and circumstances, the
elements of centralism have developed so much so that even the States of the American union
have been deprived of much of their autonomy what was granted to them under the Constitution.
Truly speaking, the field of federal jurisdiction has expanded so greatly and the growth of centralism
has been so unmistakable that many people in the United States have formed the opinion that if
the movement in this direction is not checked, in near future the States “may be left like hollow
shells operating primarily as field districts of federal departments and dependent upon the federal
treasury for their support.” In this direction, several reasons may be accounted for:
1. Political, economic and social changes have played their important part. The expansion of
territory, growth of population, increasing fields of science and technology etc. all have advanced
America from the position of a small and isolated nation with simple and agricultural economy
to that of the most highly industrialised and probably the most powerful nation of the world.
2. The civil war over the question of slavery (1861-65) gave a strong verdict against the trends of
separatism and the victory of the national government cemented the fact that the broad acts of
the President and the Congress in carrying on the war and in the reconstruction that followed
“left a heritage of expanded federal power never subsequently to be surrendered.”
3. The Supreme Court has enormously increased the authority of federal government by laying
down the doctrine of implied powers. As a final interpreter and guardian of the Constitution,
it has ruled that such are the implicit powers of the Centre, if not expressed, inasmuch as with
the march of time and coming of new conditions and circumstance the terms and phrases have
developed such implications.
4. By the system of grants-in-aid the national government has immensely increased its authority
at the expense of the autonomy of the States. He who pays the piper calls the tune, so the
weight of obligation falls upon the State governments. It has rightly been visualised that the
grants-in aid given by the Centre to the States “offer a middle ground between direct federal
assumption of certain State and local functions and their continuation under exclusive State
and local financing with haphazard coverage and diverse standards.”
5. There is the fear of another great war in general and that of the spectre of communism and
terrorism in particular. Since the State governments cannot defend themselves against an
onslaught of any external power and since the fear of communism and terrorism pervades,
naturally the upper hand of the national government has gained excessive weight.

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