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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Political Science

Western Washington University

WWU Graduate School Collection

2013

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Impact Of Federalization: An Original Analysis Of Local Cases In Federal Court, Ben (Ben James) Hagglund Jan 2013

The Impact Of Federalization: An Original Analysis Of Local Cases In Federal Court, Ben (Ben James) Hagglund

WWU Graduate School Collection

Critics of federalization argue that the federal duplication of state criminal laws places an undue burden on the federal courts and there are too many total federal crimes. Federalism proponents claim that the federal overlap threatens the states' roles as laboratories of democracy. This thesis examines criminal cases in the federal court in the Western District of Washington in 2010 and finds concurrent cases are regularly charged by U.S. attorneys in cooperation with state prosecutors. However, the impact on the court is a direct result of the discretion that U.S. attorneys exercise in filing concurrent cases.