Project Grants
The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) lists more than 600 grant and cooperative agreement programs with approximately $446 billion in annual expenditures. The…
Formula Grants
Formula grants, sometimes also called “state-administered grants,” are a method by which the federal government distributes more than $400 billion annually to state and…
Carter v. Carter Coal Company (1936)
This Supreme Court case deals with two very different conceptions of federalism and the scope of Congress’s commerce powers. The first conception is dual…
Wickard v. Filburn (1942)
During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term as president (1933–37), the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly declared portions of the New Deal unconstitutional, holding that the…
United States v. E. C. Knight Company (1895)
The issue in United States v. E. C. Knight Company (1895) was whether the Sherman Antitrust Act, enacted in 1890 to prohibit monopolistic business…
Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States (1935)
In Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States (1935), the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the National Recovery Act (NRA), the centerpiece of President Franklin Roosevelt’s…
National Labor Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation (1937)
During the first term of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, the Supreme Court invalidated many of his New Deal programs on the grounds that they…
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964)
In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause did not prohibit racial discrimination in…
Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918)
During the early years of the 1900's, the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned a kind of federal police power by upholding federal laws that banned…
Cooperative Federalism
Cooperative federalism is a model of intergovernmental relations that recognizes the overlapping functions of the national and state governments. This model can be contrasted…
Dual Federalism
Dual federalism is both a theory of how a federal system should allocate governmental powers, responsibilities, and resources and an era of American political…
Capital Punishment
The United States occupies an unusual position with respect to the death penalty. In its early history, the United States was at the forefront…
