Law Commons^™

A New Age Of Federalism, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Federalism has been in the news a lot over the past few years. The Republican-controlled Congress has enacted restrictions on the imposition of unfunded federal mandates on state governments and has passed significant welfare reform, one of the keys to which is greater state freedom in the implementation of welfare programs. The President, although often seen as resisting the more extreme Republican proposals for devolution, is himself something of an advocate for states’ rights. Clinton was a governor before he was President, and in that capacity he experienced a number of frustrations with federal red tape. Perhaps as a result, …