STATE GOVERNMENT, American. °The States?) said Lincoln, "have their status in the Union and they have no other legal status." The powers reserved to the States, their obligations to one another and to the Union, and the obligations of the Union to them: all are provided for in the. Constitution of the United States. The people of the United States under their National Constitu tion have assumed the obligation of guarantee ing to each State the republican form of gov ernment, of protecting it against foreign in vasion and domestic insurrection and of secur ing to its citizens all the rights and privileges of citizens of the United States. Each State. on the other hand, is obliged to respect the supremacy of the Constitution, the laws and the treaties of the United States and to per mit its government to act for certain purposes as the agent of the government of the United States. In general, however, the government of the United States operates directly upon the people of the United States and there is no occasion to rely upon the State govern ments for the accomplishment of national pur poses. The States are also obliged to give full faith and credit to one another's public acts and records, to extend equal privileges to one another's citizens, to return fugitives from justice and to submit controversies among themselves, if not settled by mutual agreement, to the arbitrament of the Supreme Court of the United States. The power of the national government, however, to enforce some of these obligations is defective, Powers of the States.— The powers re served to the States may be said in a general way to include all the powers of free and in dependent States, except: (1) those which are expressly delegated to the government of the United States or are reasonably implied in the grant of the expressed powers; (2) those which are expressly prohibited to the States; and (3) those which, though neither expressly delegated to the national government by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States. are reserved to the people of the United States. Of the powers expressly delegated to the na tional government some, such as the power to govern the territories of the United States or the District of Columbia, do not directly affect the powers of the States. Some of those, however, which do not directly affect the powers of the States, such as the powers to tax, to regulate interstate and foreign com merce, and to make treaties, may be used in such a manner as indirectly to affect very strongly the exercise by the States of their re served powers. Others, such as the power to establish a uniform bankruptcy law, may not limit the powers of the States unless Congress expressly so orders. Some powers, such as the power to coin money, are re-enforced by express prohibitions upon the States. The other express prohibitions upon the States are of varying importance. Probably the most important, besides those intended to give the national government exclusive control of for eign relations and the conduct of war, are those incorporated in the Constitution at the close of the Civil War, notably the provision that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law nor deny to any person the equal protec tion of the laws. Finally, the reservation of
certain rights to the people of the United States by the 10th amendment, adopted in 1790, prevents the States from exercising any powers which, though not expressly delegated to the national government nor prohibited to the States, are essential to the preservation of the sovereignty of the Union.
The people of the several States are sub ject to the sovereignty of the people of the Union, but the people of each State are equal to those of any other before the law of the Constitution. Congress may admit new States to the Union, imposing such conditions as it may deem suitable as the price of admission, but once within the sacred edifice a new State becomes the peer of the others. The powers which the States may exercise, though limited, are nevertheless very extensive and highly im portant. They include among others the fol lowing: (1) the power to establish and main tain organized governments, State and local, subject to the limitation that they be republi can in form; (2) the power to regulate the suffrage, both in State and in national elections, subject to the limitation that no citizen be deprived of the vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude; (3) the power to levy and collect taxes, except upon the instruments of the national government and upon interstate and foreign commerce; (4) the police power, including the power to enact all measures restricting the personal freedom of the individual or his use of his property, which may be necessary and proper for the preservation of the peace, the protection of the public health and morals or in any other way for the promotion of the common wel fare, subject to the limitation that no person be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law or denied the equal protec tion of the laws; (5) far-reaching powers to deal with education, religion and the supply of public services of all kinds, except the com paratively few, such as the post office, which are placed in the hands of the national govern ment; (6) the power to create corporations and trusts; and (7) to deal with the whole subject of private law, including the power to regulate the vital institutions of modem civilization, such as the family and the institution of pri vate property. Despite the growing centraliza tion of government in the United States, evi denced by the adoption of the 18th Amendment - to the Federal Constitution, the so-called pro hibition amendment, the powers of the State remain, as they were in the beginning, more important than those of the Union, so far as concerns the regulation of the daily life of the people.