While the individual states have different approaches to establishing their constitutions, they all have central elements that guide the setup and management of powers of the state government. This week you explore state government and state constitutional guidelines.
Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words:
What are the critical elements all state governments need? How are those elements represented in your state?
What are the mechanisms that allow your state constitution to be amended? Do you feel these mechanisms are necessary? How do they compare with mechanisms in other states?
Category: State and Local Political Processes
This week’s assignment focuses on the responsibilities of the various branches of government at the federal and state levels. To complete the assignment, read the scenario below and then complete the comparison matrix template.
Scenario: You are a writer for a website that evaluates the impact of legislative and judicial actions at the federal, state, and local levels. Your manager has asked you to create a matrix that allows readers to easily compare roles and responsibilities of different branches within federal and state governments.
Complete the Federal and State Government Comparison Matrix.
Cite all sources according to APA formatting guidelines. Use the resources in the Center for Writing Excellence or the Reference and Citation Generator if you need assistance.
Federalism in the United States has evolved since this country’s founding. The federal government and state governments frequently disagree on each other’s roles or responsibilities. When these disagreements occur, the judicial system frequently must resolve the dispute.
For most assignments in this course, you will respond to a scenario in which you take on the role of a writer for a website that evaluates the impact of legislative and judicial actions on the federal, state, and local levels of government. In the scenario, the website aims to educate the public on recent legislation as well as provide a historical perspective of different government actions.
As part of your job at the website, you maintain a blog about the Supreme Court. You have been assigned to write a 500- to 750-word blog post on a Supreme Court ruling within the last hundred years that has impacted federalism. Your blog post should do the following:
State the Supreme Court case you will analyze.
Describe the major issue or issues in your selected Supreme Court case.
Assess the impact the Supreme Court case had on the balance of power between the US federal government and state governments.
Cite all sources according to APA formatting guidelines. Use the resources in the Center for Writing Excellence or the Reference and Citation Generator if you need assistance.
This week you explore federal and state powers and how the concept of federalism affects the balance of power between the federal government and the states. Federalism can be defined as the distribution of power between a central government and constituent units, in the case of the United States, between the federal government and the state governments.
Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words:
Do you believe the overall balance of power between the federal government and state governments is currently balanced? Why or why not?
How would you describe the overall balance of power between the federal government and your state’s government? How does this balance reflect the expectations outlined in the US Constitution?