Law Commons^™

Optimal Federalism Across Institutions: Theory And Applications From Environmental Policies And Health Care, Dale B. Thompson

Dale Thompson

This article presents a framework to analyze federalism based on enactment, implementation, and enforcement institutions. The framework provides a mechanism to determine whether a particular public policy should be conducted at a state or federal level, by examining economies and diseconomies of scale inherent in each of these institutions. This article then applies the framework in a comparison of environmental policies for wetlands and endangered species, and in an analysis of a health care policy. These applications can then serve as guides to legislators and judges in analyzing federalism concerns.