See Preemption; constitutional clauses. Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution is commonly referred to as the Supremacy Clause. It establishes that the federal constitution, and federal law generally, take precedence over state laws, and even state constitutions. It prohibits states from interfering with the federal government's exercise of its constitutional powers, and from assuming any functions that are exclusively entrusted to the federal government. It does not, however, allow the federal government to review or veto state laws before they take effect. Last updated in June of 2017 by Stephanie Jurkowski.
Federalism and the Constitution Constitutions are complex instruments of republican government and popular sovereignty. The way that the Texas Constitution structures and empowers government in the Lone Star State is shaped by the federal structure of powers and responsibilities outlined in the U.S. Constitution. Scholars often speak of three types of powers identified in the U.S. Constitution:
Additionally, the U.S. Constitution contains numerous other clauses that contribute to the interpretation of the relationship of the states to other states, to the national government, and to the people. Article IV is dedicated to addressing many of these issues. Despite specifying this complex set of powers granted and denied to the national and state governments, the framers still felt the need to underline the generally subordinate position of the states relative to the national government in the "supremacy clause" in Article VI:
Delegated Powers Delegated powers are those powers granted to the national government under the United States Constitution. The most important delegated powers are found in Article I of the Constitution, which focuses primarily on the national legislature (the United States Congress). This article lays out in specific detail the powers possessed by Congress – and, critically, the powers Congress does not exercise. Article I, Section 8 is essentially a laundry list of the things that Congress may do. The most prominent items on this list include the "power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States...." This section also includes the following powers:
Section 8 also assigns to Congress wide ranging powers over the military, including but not limited to:
The explicit mention of these power and others explicitly mentioned in other articles of the Constitution raises the question of whether the national government and Congress can exercise powers not explicitly mentioned. The framers were careful to make some powers explicitly off-limits. These are the powers denied to Congress. The framers composed a separate list of the powers denied to the states. Denied Powers The powers denied Congress are specified in a short list in Article I, Section 9. The article begins by prohibiting Congress from limiting the slave trade until 1808, one of the key compromises between the northern and southern states. It then proceeds to prohibit things like suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus, the imposition of taxes on exports from any of the states, and granting of titles of nobility.
Reserved Powers The Bill of Rights provides an important broad guarantee to the states regarding the limits of the powers of the national government and the essentially unlimited reserve of powers that the states may claim. Amendment 10 – the last of the original ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights – states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." This "reserved powers clause" is fundamental to the ability of the states to formulate and adopt their own constitutions and laws within the rubric of the U.S. Constitution. Because the U.S. Constitution remains the fundamental constraint on the power of the states within the federal system, new constraints on state powers can and have come in the form of additional amendments to the Constitution. The most fundamental changes were set in motion by the Civil War. Amendments 13, 14, and 15, ratified in the years following the end of hostilities, placed new or reemphasized existing constraints on the states, including the prohibition on slavery, the guarantee of due process of the law for all individuals, and the legal guarantee of voting rights for freed slaves and their descendents. It took the better part of the following century to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments, an illustration of the ability of the states to use the reserved powers to resist efforts to bring them into compliance with national mandates. Later amendments prohibited unjust or undemocratic practices in the various states, or expanded the voting franchise to new groups. The 19th Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote throughout the country. The 24th amendment outlawed the poll tax, which tended to disenfranchise blacks and other minorities, as well as poor whites. The 26th lowered the legal voting age to 18 years. State Relations The U.S. Constitution also outlines general rules for relations between the states and other aspects of the states' relationship to the national government. Article IV of the Constitution is exclusively dedicated to these concerns.
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Which constitution limits the power of government more -- the Texas Constitution or the U.S. Constitution?
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