to voters, also had the effect of diminishing their roles as representatives of their individual states since they now answered to the general public rather than to the state legislatures, hurting state freedoms. The Eleventh Amendment denied Congress the authority to make states subject to lawsuits in federal courts. Power seesawed between the two levels of government over time. Was this the founders intention? During their time, fear of big government and of anarchy induced self destruction plagued the conventions. The anti federalists were afraid of tyranny and the federalists worried that the country would collapse without guidance. Federalism changes according to the country's needs and it is the brevity of the constitution allows this flexibility. It was never merely a set of static institutional arrangements, frozen in time by the Constitution. It is an adaptable process that has economic, administrative, and political aspects as well as constitutional ones. It evolved from dual to cooperative to new federalism.From the approval of the Constitution to the New Deal was a period where the national government was limited to promoting commerce. It was the state governments that dealt with governing citizens. The framers expected that the states would be the principal policymakers in the federal system, so most domestic policy issues were left to them. The areas of influence between the two levels of governments are distinct. The powers granted to the federal government are relatively few and deal mainly with foreign and military affairs and commerce issues. The commerce clause Article I, Section 8 gives the national government authority over interstate and international commerce. Together with sections 9 and 10, it prohibits states from restraining interstate trade. The federal government also got the supremacy clause, which says that if there is a conflict between local and federal laws, national laws reign supreme. The states were ...
