The Ideological Origins of American Federalism [electronic resource].

Description based upon print version of record.

Introduction : a well-constructed union -- The federal idea -- Dividing lawmaking power -- The debates over sovereignty -- Forging a federated union -- The authority of a central government -- Jurisdiction as the battlefield -- Epilogue : federalism demystified.

In this book, the author traces the history of American federal thought from its colonial beginnings in scattered provincial responses to British assertions of authority, to its emergence in the late eighteenth century as a normative theory of multilayered government. The core of this new federal ideology was a belief that multiple independent levels of government could legitimately exist within a single polity, and that such an arrangement was not a defect but a virtue.

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