`FEDERALIST PAPERS' TO SHOW PUPILS ERROR OF OUR WAYS.

Byline: Gary M. Galles

BEGINNING this year, California high schools must include the Federalist Papers among their assigned readings. This decision deserves applause, since those essays present the clearest statement we have about the role and reach of the federal government, envisioned under the Constitution. However, it could also prove to be very subversive to modern American ``government as usual,'' because any careful readings of the Federalist Papers will show students just how far our federal government has expanded beyond the vision promoted by Madison, Hamilton and Jay and endorsed by the states.

Perhaps, nowhere is the gap between intent and current practice greater than in the relationship between the federal and state governments, based on the 10th Amendment (``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''). In contrast to the clear wording and understanding of this linchpin of the Bill of Rights (e.g., Virginia's ratification stated that ``no right, of any denomination, can be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified (by the United States) . . . except in those instances where power is given by the Constitution for those purposes.''), the federal government today has come to almost totally dominate state governments, through the carrot of federal funds and the stick of unfunded federal mandates, ranging from required background checks on gun sales to motor-voter laws and services to illegal immigrants (the National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that complying with federal requirements now absorbs 20 percent of state spending).

Perhaps the clearest way to recognize how far we have strayed from our constitutional roots is in the words of the Federalist Papers themselves.

The most famous Federalist statement on the intended scope of federal government power (written even before the 10th Amendment was added to ``insure'' states against an overbearing federal government), comes from Madison in No. 45: ``The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. . . . The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order improvement and prosperity of the state.''

No clearer statement of the intended limits on federal power could be imagined. But Madison reinforces it in Federalist 46: ``The powers proposed to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual states, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the union.''

Madison was not alone in this understanding of the intended federal role, as Hamilton's Federalist 17 makes abundantly clear:

``It may be said, that (the Constitution) would tend to render the government of the union too powerful and to enable it to absorb in itself those residuary authorities, which it might be judged proper to leave with the states for local purposes. Allowing the utmost latitude to the love of power, which any reasonable man can require, I confess, I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons entrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the states of the authorities of that description.

``The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same state, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction. It is therefore improbable that there should exist a disposition in the federal councils to usurp the powers with which they are connected.''

Comparing the Constitution and the Federalist Papers with almost any day's political news makes it clear, that the federal government has grown far beyond its constitutional role. It is time to begin undoing the abuses that have resulted. The halting devolution of welfare policy to the states is one baby step back in the right direction. However, for real strides back toward our designed federal order, we first need citizens who are familiar with the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and who are willing to vote, based on that understanding. Educating high schoolers is a start. But careful reading and thinking about these founding documents is also essential citizenship homework for every other American.