Somin on Judicial Review and Federalism in US History

Ilya Somin,  George Mason University School of Law, has posted The Impact of Judicial Review on American Federalism: Promoting Centralization More than State Autonomy, which is to appear in Courts in Federal Countries: Federalists or Unitarists? ed. Nicholas Aroney and John Kincaid (Oxford University Press).  Here is the abstract:

The relative scope of federal and state power under the U.S. Constitution has been a major bone of contention for over 200 years. Courts have sometimes enforced substantial limits on federal authority by striking down federal laws deemed to be outside the scope of Congress' enumerated powers under Article I of the Constitution. Very often, the judiciary has also constrained state power by invalidating state laws as violations of constitutional rights.

While judicial review has therefore promoted both centralization and state autonomy at different times, on balance it has strengthened the former at the expense of the latter. This pattern has been especially prevalent since the 1930s, as the Supreme Court largely abandoned earlier efforts to police limits on congressional power, while simultaneously enforcing a growing array of individual rights against state and local governments.

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