hey everybody welcome back it's the last lesson of unit one so smash that like button in Celebration [Music] we're going to discuss some advantages and disadvantages to having a federal system we already know that Federalism is the division of power between federal states and local governments and like most things in life there are some things that are really good and some maybe not so good things about that system let's start with some advantages federalism gives us more opportunities to participate politically there are multiple access points for political participation so you can engage politically at a variety of levels local state and federal this allows people to have more opportunities to try to influence policy and you have more political power locally than you do nationally of course you could also just be cynical and be like oh great more people trying to tell me what to do another Advantage is that it allows states to make policies that are unique to their own needs for example in Florida we have to make hurricane evacuation policies but a state like Colorado has no need for that but they have a need to have snowstorm policies so the fact that each state can make those decisions for themselves is probably a pretty good thing it wouldn't make much sense for people in Florida to have a say in the snowstorm policies of Colorado additionally federalism allows states to make policy in the absence of a national consensus so on an issue that's kind of undecided or where some people have one answer and other people in other states have a different answer people in each state can choose to do their own thing recently the Supreme Court has returned the abortion issue to the states allowing more liberal states to protect abortion rights and access while conservative states have greatly restricted if not outright banned the practice on the other hand when necessary the federal government can make a uniform policy telling everybody in the country this is the law that everybody has to follow regardless of what state you're in this comes in handy with things like conducting foreign policy or other areas that would suffer if there were different states attempting to do different things Justice Brandis and Supreme Court case once famously espoused the idea that states serve as Laboratories of democracy he said a single courageous statement if its citizens shoes serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country so Laboratories of democracy is the idea that each state can kind of experiment by making their own policies while the other states and the federal government can sit back and observe how it works out for the enterprising State a now classic example is marijuana policy way back in 2012 which oh my God you probably don't even remember marijuana used to be illegal basically everywhere hard to believe I know but trust me it was then Colorado and Washington came along and served as Laboratories of democracy and they legalized the stuff for recreational use and the rest of the country sat back and waited to see if they became a post-apocalyptic hellscape or if the stake offers got flush with that Dewey sweet marijuana tax money and then a bunch of other states in the last decade decided Well they want that tax revenue too and they've copied those original states again whether some of these specifically are advantages or disadvantages is pretty subjective but in the disadvantage column some dislike that federalism makes it tougher for the federal government to implement a unified policy for the whole nation for example some people criticize federalism because things like education policy can be so different from one state to another and it's so much tougher for the US to make a one-size-fits-all policy than it is in other countries that don't have a federal system there's also the argument that states rights have been used to perpetuate discrimination historically and even contemporarily and this goes along with Madison's reasoning in Federalist number 10 that Minority Rights will be better protected in a larger Republic than smaller ones this is obviously not very charitable to states rights supporters but this View claims that the true intent is to get out of federal policies that protect various minority interests by claiming that hey this issue is left in the states to do whatever they want to be fair let's define states rights as the belief that the 10th Amendment reserves non-delegated powers to the states so states rights supporters believe that the vast majority of things should be handled at the state level not the federal level arguing that people in each state should get to make the policies that they prefer instead of getting bossed around by people from other states who have other values and maybe have other priorities and choice Advocates have been enjoying a bit of success over the last few decades pulling back at least a little bit of the power from the federal government this is sometimes even referred to as new federalism a return to more distinct lines of responsibility for federal and state programs this push began under Nixon but really ramped up under Reagan who attempted to usher in a new era of devolution which attempts to give power back to the States essentially it posits that the federal government has gotten too powerful involving things outside of its constitutional purview and so Devolution is the attempt to take some of those Powers away from the federal and give them back to the States despite this increase in state influence over the last generation or so the big picture trend for the last 200 years has been that the federal government has grown massively stronger kind of like my deadlift while states have typically gotten weaker not unlike my bench all right everybody that is it for unit one take a deep breath you made it I know you have a test coming soon so be sure to check out my unit one review video as well as the ultimate review packet unit 1 is available as a free preview so what are you doing until next time this is Ben a money production thanks again for watching like subscribe ring the bell do all that stuff and I will see you in the next video