The US is a clusterfuck of competing and overlapping agencies and organisations and departments and lobby groups and political action committees with checks and balances and regulations and procedures and people having quiet meetings off the books to get what they want done and so on and so forth. This is why you never get anything done. Now, this means your government can never do anything really awful,but it also means it can never do anything really useful.
The Framers endeavored to design a country of enduring, maximum liberty.
The Framers' dread of a concentration of power is the overarching reason they formed a tripartite, check-and-balances national government. And in keeping with their commitment to dispersion of power they granted each State its own sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment's principle of federalism.
The result is an America comprised of 51 sovereign powers, the federal government plus the 50 States.
While speaking at a law school in Hawaii Justice Scalia said "it's game over" if a concentration of power ever obtains.
During a rare appearance on a morning TV show Justice Gorsuch also emphasized the essentiality of limited power, and that the meaning of the Constitution's fundamental law, and its other provisions, is found in the definition of the words the Framers used at the time they drafted the Constitution.
This interpretative approach preserves fundamental liberties.
Here is Justice Black's inimitable reverence for "Our Federalism."
Younger v. Harris (1971)
This underlying reason for restraining courts of equity from interfering with criminal prosecutions is reinforced by an even more vital consideration, the notion of "comity," that is, a proper respect for state functions, a recognition of the fact that the entire country is made up of a Union of separate state governments, and a continuance of the belief that the National Government will fare best if the States and their institutions are left free to perform their separate functions in their separate ways.
This, perhaps for lack of a better and clearer way to describe it, is referred to by many as "Our Federalism," and one familiar with the profound debates that ushered our Federal Constitution into existence is bound to respect those who remain loyal to the ideals and dreams of "Our Federalism."
The concept does not mean blind deference to "States' Rights" any more than it means centralization of control over every important issue in our National Government and its courts.
The Framers rejected both these courses.
What the concept does represent is a system in which there is sensitivity to the legitimate interests of both State and National Governments, and in which the National Government, anxious though it may be to vindicate and protect federal rights and federal interests, always endeavors to do so in ways that will not unduly interfere with the legitimate activities of the States.
It should never be forgotten that this slogan, "Our Federalism," born in the early struggling days of our Union of States, occupies a highly important place in our Nation's history and its future.
