Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Constitutionalizing The Dispute: Federalism In Hyper-Partisan Times, James H. Read

Political Science Faculty Publications

This article describes how partisan actors during the Obama years have escalated polarization by transforming policy disputes into constitutional contests over the ground rules of the federal system – contests, moreover, in which one bloc of politically like-minded states opposes another. The article examines in particular how Republicans have supported strong claims of state sovereignty, and in some cases resurrected the antebellum doctrine of nullification, to deny to either Congress or the executive branch the authority to reform state health care markets or to limit states’ emissions of greenhouse gases. Democrats have reinforced the partisan divide by declining to debate …