Why are state-federal relations important?
Governmental functions in the United States are divided among a national (or federal) government and the governments of the states and their respective localities. Although federal law, within its proper sphere, is binding upon the states, the U.S. Constitution leaves a large amount of the governance of the country to state and local governments. This division of governmental responsibility between federal and state governments is referred to as “federalism.” Despite the significant growth of the federal government over the 20th century, both in size and in its areas of influence, many governmental responsibilities are still left to the states for reasons of both policy and practicality. This is certainly the case with the American system of justice, in which the state court systems collectively handle many times the volume of cases that the federal courts do, even disregarding a very large volume of comparatively simple traffic and ordinance violations that are within states’ jurisdic
