Social Science Courses/U.S. Government: High SchoolCourse
- AuthorTravis Hartin
Travis has taught college-level statistics, research methods, and psychology courses for eight years. Travis has a Master’s degree and PhD in experimental psychology from Kent State University with a focus on student learning and cognitive research.
View bio - InstructorMichelle Penn
Michelle has a J.D. and her PhD in History.
View bio
Learn about state sovereignty as it relates to federalism in the United States. Explore the aspects and limits of federalism, including key Supreme Court cases.Updated: 11/21/2023
Table of Contents
- What Is State Sovereignty in the United States?
- How Does State Sovereignty Impact Lives?
- State Sovereignty vs. Federal Authority
- Lesson Summary
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an example of state sovereignty?
A sovereign state is any area of land that has absolute power over its own laws and liberties. Argentina, for example, is a sovereign state. The states in the U.S. have sovereignty to write their own laws and to establish state courts.
Are there sovereign states in the U.S.?
Each state in the U.S. is sovereign in the sense that they have their own constitution and generally create their own laws. However, they still have to adhere to federal laws, and the Supreme Court (a federal court) is the highest court in the land that can overrule states' judicial decisions.
Table of Contents
- What Is State Sovereignty in the United States?
- How Does State Sovereignty Impact Lives?
- State Sovereignty vs. Federal Authority
- Lesson Summary
The term ''sovereignty'' has a couple of different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. On the one hand, it can refer to an area of land in which the people have supreme authority to govern themselves and to create their own laws. In this context, the term sovereign refers to countries that rule over themselves in a way that is independent of the other countries around them. For example, Argentina is a sovereign country that governs itself.
In the context of the United States, state sovereignty refers to the fact that each state has the authority to create its own laws, to operate its own judicial system, and to effectively govern itself. However, state sovereignty is different from the type of sovereignty that an individual country might enjoy. That is because the U.S. operates under a system of federalism in which the states are regulated by two levels of government: the state government and the federal government. This means that states are free to regulate themselves, but the federal government can intervene in states' affairs under certain conditions.
The U.S. Constitution is a document that outlines the highest laws in the country. It acts as a charter that establishes the government's powers and how it should be structured, such as having separate branches of legislative, judicial, and executive authorities. The Constitution initially only outlined a few specifications, such as guaranteeing people a right to a criminal trial by jury, forbidding laws from being established against individuals, and forbidding the retroactive application of laws to punish someone for doing something when it was legal.
However, the U.S. government passed the 10th Amendment in 1789 and ratified it in 1791. The 10th Amendment is the last amendment in the Bill of Rights, and it essentially gives the states any power that is not explicitly granted to the federal government. Specifically, the 10th Amendment says, ''The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.'' For example, the federal government has the explicit authority to declare war against other countries and to coin money. So, states do not have this authority. However, delineating between states' rights and federal authority has been a difficult and controversial endeavor in the centuries since the 10th Amendment was established.
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To further understand state sovereignty and questions on what sovereign states are, it helps to look at how federalism has impacted people's lives in American history. Article VI of the Constitution is referred to as the Supremacy Clause and it allows for federal laws to have more power than state laws. It also forbids states from interfering with the federal government when it exercises its constitutional powers. The federal government will typically intervene with a state law that violates a person's constitutional rights, such as an instance in which a state might pass a law that violates someone's right to a criminal trial by jury. There have been other instances in which the federal government disallowed states from other activities that violated people's rights, such as forbidding state laws that enforced racial segregation during the civil rights movements. The federal government also forbade slavery by passing the 13th Amendment after the Civil War.
Another example of how federalism has impacted people's lives in America is a state's right to establish police powers. Police powers allow each state the right to establish and enforce laws that relate to the general safety, health, and welfare of the public. There is not a general federal police force in the United States.
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There have been instances in which state sovereignty was at odds with federal authority. For example, in 1984 the Supreme Court ruled in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority that state and local governments are required to provide overtime pay. The Court also ruled that minimum wage is constitutional and that states have to adhere to federal minimum wage laws. Another example of state laws conflicting with federal laws are instances in which states legalize substances that remain illegal under federal laws. For example, Colorado legalized marijuana for recreational use across the state. However, it is still illegal to have marijuana on federal property in the state.
Another case worth mentioning in helping one to decide what the sovereign states are is Jacobson v. Massachusetts. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that states have the right to force the public to be vaccinated in the interest of public welfare. Essentially, the court ruled that forced vaccinations fall under states' police powers.
There have been other instances in which the federal government has expanded its power. For example, the 16th Amendment was passed in 1909 and reads, ''The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.'' With this change to the Constitution, the federal government essentially granted itself the power to collect income tax and has been viewed as a controversial act.
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State sovereignty is the power that states have to make their own laws and to be free from federal interference in some respects. It is the result of federalism, or when a system has two levels of government. This type of dual government is largely tied to the 10th Amendment. The 10th Amendment states, ''The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.'' One way that federalism has impacted people's lives is through the police powers, or the power that states have to create and enforce laws relating to the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
There have been instances in which state and federal laws have been at odds. For example, the Supreme Court decided in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority that state and local governments must provide overtime pay to employees. It also decided that minimum wage laws are constitutional. The Supreme Court's ruling in Jacobson v. Massachusetts is that states can force people to be vaccinated. The ruling was based on the belief that being vaccinated promotes the general welfare of the state.
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Video Transcript
States' Rights
What do slavery, the denial of civil rights to African Americans, gay marriage, legalized cannabis, health care, and gun control all have in common? They have been formulated as issues of state's rights, also known as state sovereignty. State sovereignty means both the power of states to make their own laws and the power of state governments to be free from federal interference in certain aspects of government. The main challenge to state authority today comes from the federal government.
The Tenth Amendment
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1791, reads, ''The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.'' In other words, powers not given to the federal government by the Constitution, are usually given to the states. And, of course, states can't make laws about areas that are given to the Federal government. For example, a state can't declare a war with another country (according to the Constitution, only the United States Congress can do that).
In writing the amendment, the founders wanted to reinforce the principle of federalism outlined in the Constitution. Within the principle of federalism, the founders were afraid of giving the federal government too much power because they didn't want a king with unlimited powers. But they also felt that the federal government needed some power to keep the overall nation cohesive. They had tried to have a weak central government under the Articles of Confederation, and it was a mess. Federalism was a way to give the state and federal governments what they hoped was just the right amount of power: not too much and not too little, but just right (sort of like Goldilocks and her porridge). The Tenth Amendment made it clear that the federal government shouldn't have powers that aren't given to them by the Constitution. However, in areas where federal and state laws conflict, the Constitution says that federal law wins.
State Sovereignty & Daily Life
Even though it might seem like laws are pretty much the same across the United States, state sovereignty means that local laws might be different. For example, depending on the state you're located in, it might be legal for you to use cannabis, or you might receive life in prison if you are caught with it! Of course, if the federal government wants to charge you with a crime for cannabis, it doesn't matter which state you are in because federal laws trump state laws.
The Power of the State
Not all of the founders agreed about how much power the federal government should have over the states, and that disagreement continues to the present day. Some founders, like Thomas Jefferson, believed strongly in states' rights. Others, like Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, wanted a stronger federal government. The disagreements over state sovereignty can be divided into two main issues, although they often overlap: the power of the states to make their own laws and limiting federal regulations on states. Let's look first at the ability of states to make their own laws. We can use the example of a state's police powers.
States have the power to create and enforce laws that protect the safety, health, and welfare of the public because this right wasn't given to the federal government in the Constitution. This is often referred to as the police power. State police powers can be pretty broad and don't receive a lot of attention from the United States Supreme Court because the police power is pretty well established. Moreover, the United States Supreme Court can't interpret a state's constitution because that's a job for the state's own courts. Supreme Court cases like the 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts found that Massachusetts could force people to be vaccinated because it was in the general welfare of the state.
Federal Laws & Regulations
Sometimes, federal laws that infringe too much on state sovereignty are declared unconstitutional. For example, Printz v. United States, a 1997 Supreme Court case, declared a law requiring state and local law enforcement to conduct background checks on people trying to buy handguns unconstitutional. This was because the law would directly command state officials to do certain actions. This doesn't mean that any federal regulations of states are unconstitutional, just that Printz in particular touched on the traditional state power of law enforcement. The federal government can't interfere in certain aspects of state government. For example, the president can't pardon a prisoner of a state prison; only the state's governor can do that.
On the other hand, other federal regulations of state laws have been found constitutional. For example, in 1985, in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, the Supreme Court found that a law requiring state and local governments to provide overtime pay and minimum wage to their employees was constitutional because there was nothing in the law in question ''that is destructive of state sovereignty or violative of any constitutional provision.'' If it sounds like the Supreme Court isn't completely consistent on the issue, you're right! Just like the founders disagreed about how far state sovereignty extended, so do current politicians and Supreme Court justices.
Lesson Summary
All right, let's take a moment or two to review. As we learned, state sovereignty, also known as states' rights, means states have the power and rights to make and enforce their own laws in areas that the United States Constitution doesn't reserve for the federal government. This is part of the principle of federalism, in which, as we learned, the founders were afraid of giving the federal government too much power because they didn't want a king with unlimited powers, but also felt that the federal government needed some power to keep the overall nation cohesive. State laws can make a big difference in people's lives because states have a pretty broad power to make laws including the police power, which refers to the power to create and enforce laws that protect the safety, health, and welfare of the public because this right wasn't given to the federal government in the Constitution. Federal laws that interfere too much with state authority will be declared unconstitutional, but if federal and state laws conflict, federal law wins.
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