USA - International Encyclopaedia of Laws

121–124Part II. Forms of Sub-national GovernmentsChapter 1. General§1. INTRODUCTION121. Sub-national units in a federal system enjoy an independent constitutionalstatus and exercise independent powers. That is, their existence and theirpowers are constitutionally guaranteed rather than under the control of thenational government.122. The U.S. Constitution safeguards the position of the American statesin the federal system in several ways. First, it grants only limited powers to thenational government and reserves ungranted powers to the states (or the people).The Tenth Amendment states: ‘The powers not delegated to the United Statesby the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the Statesrespectively, or to the people.’ Although this may initially have been the mostimportant protection for the states, the expansion of national power, togetherwith the U.S. Supreme Court’s acquiescence in its expansion, has raisedquestions about whether this continues to be an effective safeguard of stateautonomy. During the 1990s, the Supreme Court has shown a greater interestin safeguarding state power and curtailing overreaching by the nationalgovernment; 1 but its recent rulings have blocked the further expansion ofnational power rather than reversing the effects of earlier rulings that producedthat expansion.1. See, for example, United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995); Seminole Tribe of Floridav. Florida, 116 S.Ct. 1114 (1996); City of Boerne v. Flores, 117 S.Ct. 2157 (1997); andPrintz v. United States, 117 S.Ct. 2365 (1997).123. Second, the Constitution grants extraordinary protection to theterritorial integrity of the states, forbidding tampering with state boundaries notonly by congressional legislation but also by the normal processes for constitutionalamendment. Article VI, section 3 of the Constitution states: ‘no new Stateshall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor anyState be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States,without the Consent of the Legislature of the States concerned as well as of theCongress.’124. Third, the Constitution secures to the states a role in the selection offederal officials and in the processes of the national government. Initially, stateConstitutional Law – Suppl. 34 (October 1999) USA (Sub-national) – 53