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Federalism In The Taft Court Era: Can It Be “Revived”?, Robert Post

Duke Law Journal

This Article analyzes the Supreme Court's view of federalism during the decade of the 1920s. It offers a detailed discussion of four jurisprudential areas: congressional power, dormant Commerce Clause doctrine, intergovernmental tax immunity, and judicial centralization through the enforcement of federal common law and constitutional rights. The resurgent federalism of the contemporary Court is typically characterized as "reviving" pre-New Deal principles. This Article concludes, however, that any such revival is highly implausible. It offers four reasons for this conclusion. First, the pre-New Deal Court conceived federalism in terms of the ideal of dual sovereignty, which imagined that the federal government …