No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Political Principles of Federalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
Federalism has been described by Dicey as “a political contrivance intended to reconcile national unity and power with the maintenance of ‘state right’”. Dr. Schmitt, a contemporary German student of federal institutions, has stated that “the nature of union consists in a dualism of the political existence, in a combination of federative common existence and political unity on the one hand with the continuance of plurality, of a pluralism of political individual unities, on the other”. Lord Bryce had expressed the same thought in more picturesque language in his earlier study of federal institutions in the United States.
The central or national government and the State governments may be compared to a large building and a set of smaller buildings standing on the same ground yet distinct from each other. It is a combination sometimes seen where a great church has been erected over more ancient homes of worship. First the soil is covered by a number of small shrines and chapels, built at different times and in different styles of architecture, each complete in itself. Then over them and including them all in its spacious fabric there is reared a new pile with its own loftier roof, its own walls, which may rest upon and incorporate the walls of the older shrines, its own internal plan. The identity of the earlier buildings has, however, not been obliterated; and if the later and larger structure were to disappear, a little repair would enable them to keep out wind and weather, and be again what they once were, distinct and separate edifices.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , August 1935 , pp. 337 - 347
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1935
References
1 Dicey, A. V., Law of the Constitution (London, 1927), p. 139.Google Scholar
2 See Mogi, Sobei, The Problem of Federalism (London, 1931), p. 1104.Google Scholar
3 Bryce, James, The American Commonwealth (New York, 1895), p. 17.Google Scholar
4 The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, ss. 123 and 124. See also Constitution of the United States, art. IV, s. 3.
5 Ibid., art. I, s. 8.
6 Ibid., art. I, s. 9.
7 The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, s. 51, II.
8 Ibid., s. 51, III.
9 Ibid., s. 99.
10 14 A.C. 46.
11 B.N.A. Act, 1871, ss. 2 and 3.
12 See Citizen's Insurance Company v. Parsons, 7 A.C. 96; Hodge v. The Queen, 9 A.C. 117; Liquidators' Maritime Bank v. Receiver-General of New Brunswick, 1892, A.C. 437.