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Federal Preemption

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FEDERAL PREEMPTION 4 concerns involving pollution through CO2 emissions and water treatment. States must adhere to these regulations, but they are not prohibited from expanding them to require tighter and stricter regulations. The decision of whether or not to regulate these areas has been preempted, but the extent is still left to the states’ powers, thus exemplifying partial preemption. Contingent preemption is somewhat of a subtype of both total and partial preemption. This category involves cases where federal statutes only take action when have failed to meet some set of requirements – that is, preemption in these cases is contingent upon a state’s ability to meet external conditions. The Voting Rights Act, for example, required statistical …show more content…

Unlike complete- and partial-type preemptions, contingent preemptions do not find the federal government directly involved initially, instead remaining as overseers. The implication is that states will eventually fix their own systems to be in line with federal regulations, so long as those regulations are constitutional. Brief History and General Evolution of Federal Preemption Regarding the history of federal preemption, major cases involving preemption may be tracked from the early years of the nation. One landmark case is Gibbons v. Ogden, which had profound implications regarding federal jurisdiction, granting the federal government the exclusive power of regulating interstate commerce. With the decision of this case in 1824, any current state laws that set regulations on interstate commerce were totally preempted by federal law. FEDERAL PREEMPTION 5 A second case, more monumental in significance, is McCulloch v. Maryland. The true impact behind this case is regarding the language behind the decision, where it was stated …show more content…

Further, multitudes of cases in which federal preemption is a question turn to this justification, creating a “history” by which, not just cases involving national banks, decisions regarding preemption in general are decided (Hills, Jr., 2013, p. 1237). There is no need for federal and state law on the same policy field to exist together if some question regarding the legitimacy of either arises – federal law trumps state law, as per the Constitution. Although significant cases of preemption have arisen throughout the nation’s history, the number of decisions regarding federal preemption has largely increased in the past hundred years. Over half of preemption statutes enacted by the federal government were from the 1970s and 1980s, meaning that the trend towards increased preemption case is indeed a modern phenomenon (Stephens & Wikstrom, 2007, p. 150). Most likely, this is a result of urbanization and the general growth of the federal government, although it may also be seen as a symptom and cause of this growth. Nevertheless, as Congress and federal agencies, especially the

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