2
Articles the unum was dissolving into the pluribus, the Antifederalist opponents of the new
Constitution feared that the new structure of union would dissolve the pluribus into the
unum.
Over the years since 1787, the tension between the unum and the pluribus has never
been resolved definitively and completely in the victory of one side over the other; rather,
even despite the Civil War, that tension has remained in full force and has at best merely
favored one side at times over the other. As Stuart Taylor notes:
The battle over the relative rights and powers of the state and federal
governments has a long and complex history. Both the constitution and the
constitutional amendments that followed the Civil War were assertions of
federal supremacy over the states. But neither made the federal government
the kind of omnipotent, centralized repository of all governmental powers
that the Framers saw as a formula for tyranny.
Rather, a sphere of state sovereignty was reserved—along with ample
room for argument about how broad it should be. The writings of various
Framers and the reasoning of various Supreme Court precedents provide
ammunition for both sides in the Justices' current debates . . . ."
2
It is the political theory implicit in those current debates that is the focus of this paper. Re-
cent cases such as United States v. Morrison,
3
Printz v. United States,
4
U.S. Term Limits v.
Thornton,
5
United States v. Lopez,
6
New York v. United States,
7
and Gregory v. Ashcroft
8
indicate that an increasingly central preoccupation of the current conservative majority on
the U.S. Supreme Court is a reconsideration of the principle of federalism taken for granted
since the New Deal. With those decisions Justices Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy, Scalia,
2
Stuart Taylor, Jr., "A Bridge Too Far On States' Rights," National Journal 7/24/99, pp.
2136-2137, at 2136.
3
529 U.S. 528 (2000).
4
521 U.S. 898 (1997).
5
514 U.S. 779 (1995).
6
514 U.S. 549 (1995).
7
505 U.S. 144 (1992).
8
501 U.S. 452 (1991).
Convention