Cambridge Journals Online

The Rehnquist Court and the Political Dynamics of Federalism

J. Mitchell  Pickerill  a1 and Cornell W.  Clayton  a2 a1 J. Mitchell Pickerill is assistant professor of political science at Washington State University (mitchp@wsu.edu) a2 Cornell W. Clayton is professor of political science at Washington State University (cornell@mail.wsu.edu)

Article author query pickerill jm     clayton cw

Abstract

The Rehnquist Court's federalism decisions have sparked contentious debate about the role of the Court in the American political system. This article examines the reasons behind the Court's revival of federalism and the controversy it has produced. The first part reviews the normative jurisprudential debate over the Court's role as it has been cast in the legal academy. In the second part, we turn to an historical-empirical, or “political regimes,” framework for understanding the role of the Supreme Court. Although this framework provides a better explanation of the Rehnquist Court's foray into federalism, the connections between this approach and normative jurisprudential debates remain important, and we explore them in the final section. The Court's recent jurisprudence on federalism reflects both consensus and division within the current political regime—consensus that federalism is an important value, but division over how best to protect that value. We argue that competing jurisprudential theories over the role of the Court illustrate these political divisions. Thus, this article highlights the special insights political scientists bring to the subject, but also demonstrates how the two approaches can be usefully combined to provide a more robust understanding of the Court's role in the American political system. ^a

Footnotes

^a The authors thank Richard Brisbin, John Dinan, Mark Graber, Ashley Grosse, Jennifer Hochschild, Tom Keck, David O'Brien, Bob Turner, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions along the way.