Study On Madison's Federalism

America is the first country to establish Modern federalism, which has firmly existed more than 200 years, and played an important role in American political lives. It is an emblematical federalism, which offers reference for other countries to solve the relations between central government and local government.Federalism is one of the major principles in American constitution, which was invented by James Madison. Alexis de Tocqueville thought that federalism was one of the most important political rules, through which every area could become regional autonomy; and the whole commonwealth was ruled by constitution. He thought that it was the trait of democracy which was that rights were centralized by legislature. The chance to establish America, the law of the country and her people's belief in freedom are the elements and causes of American democracy.Daniel· J· Elazar considers that the real signification of American federalism is that it offers a way to evade absolute sovereignty, that is to say, it offers another modern way for a regime to be founded which is more democratic than Jacobin.There are four parts in my paper. First part discusses the background of Madison's federalism, including the influences of British constitutional government, the situation of the country and confederacy. As the colony of Britain, each state had her own juristical system before independency according to British common law. Consequently they had the autonomic tradition. So they built a weak central government, which could not vindicate the state's dignity outside and maintain stabilization inside. Madison figured out that the biggest weakness of federalism was that the central government had little power, and every state had their own sovereignty. So he suggested building a strong central government, which could get great power from states, though the American reality could not permit to build a centralized state.Secondly, talks about the mayor principles. At first the character of American constitution is analyzed, which is national or federal. Then addresses the major principles of Madison's federalism, including the people dominion, division of powers, representative system and monocracy. This time is the beginning to develop federalism, which was called dualistic federalism, which means that federal government and states have their own powers, they are both independent. At the same time, he also emphasized that the federal government is in charge, that is to say, the state law could not collide with federal constitution. The third part is the reason to form the Madison's federalism, which is the outcome of history. At first, Madison called for different interests; he thought which could evade numerous tyrannies. The representative system could reflect the people's requests, and then it could express different interests. Secondly, the federalism the compromise with anti-federalists. Madison is the master of compromise, and he could extract experiences from opponent opinions, which made his system more perfect. At last the American culture characters also lead to federalism. American hanker for freedom, so the American constitution protected human rightsAt the end of the paper summarized the characters of Madison's federalism, which is different from Richard Hamilton. Of course, there are defections in his federalism, the biggest weakness was that it permitted slavery, which encouraged slave trade indirectly, and led to civil war. At last the southern states put forward the federalism as the excuses of civil war, which was the ironical to Madison.Of course, the development of federalism is not monotonous. As Woodrow Wilson said, the relation between federal government and state is most important in our constitutional government. As a matter of fact, nobody could solve this question for good, because everything is changing. "Each period could add new thing for federalism, and lead to the new questions." Certainly, the relation between federal government and state is changing all the time. The great exploits of Madison is that he offers a basic principle for the change, which made the change remain essentially the same despite all.