The Handbook of Municipal Bonds
Chapter One
The Central Place of States
and Local Governments in
American Federalism
Richard Briffault
Joseph P. Chamberlain Professor of Legislation
Columbia University School of Law
Writing in Federalist Number 45, James Madison predicted that the states
would dominate the new federal union created by the Constitution. The
powers of the federal government were "few and defined," he pointed out,
limited primarily to "external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign
commerce." By contrast, the states, he explained, would have authority over
"all the objects which, in the ordinary course o ... read full excerpt from The Handbook of Municipal Bonds ebook