New Federalism (Nixon)
Reacting to the growth of the federal government and the increased centralization that marked President Lyndon B. Johnson’screative federalism, the Nixon administration sought to…
Nixon, Richard M.
Born on January 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, California, Richard M. Nixon would become the thirty-seventh president of the United States. Nixon attended Whittier…
Civil Rights
See Civil Rights Act of 1875; Civil Rights Act of 1964
Roosevelt, Theodore
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), the twenty-sixth president of the United States, recast the presidency into an institution of national political leadership by pursing an aggressive…
Marshall, John
As chief justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835, John Marshall of Virginia played a formative role in establishing…
Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Considering its pre-Constitution origins as the product of a weak legislature about to expire, the Northwest Ordinance was remarkable in its enduring contribution to…
Supremacy Clause: Article VI, Clause 2
The second and third sections of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution provide, The Constitution and the Laws of the United States which shall…
Dillon’s Rule
Named after nineteenth-century Ohio Judge John Forrest Dillon, who famously expounded the principle, Dillon’s Rule is a strict construction of the authority of local…
Constitutional Convention of 1787
The Constitutional Convention was a signal event in the history of federalism for it was there that the American style of federalism originated. The…
Federal-State Relations
Federal-State relations have many facets, from legal and financial to political, and have varied from cordial to combative. This entry examines the constitutional clauses…
Commerce among the States
A national power to regulate commerce, along with the closely connected need for national revenues, was the most immediate cause of the Philadelphia Convention…
Amendment Process
The Constitution of the United States, as originally written, contained only 7,000 words. However, the authors recognized the necessity of amending the document. The…
Alien and Sedition Acts
From June 18 to July 14, 1798, the Federalist Party in Congress passed four acts regulating the press and controlling the activities of aliens,…
