LaCroix has written a good book on the ideological roots of American federalism, which will be of interest to scholars and students pursuing political science, history, or law. Her adoption of the language for her title from Bernard Bailyn's masterpiece of intellectual history indicates that the book will rely heavily upon the leading historiography of the intellectual history of the founding era, and will even constitute a tribute to it. LaCroix builds upon the work not only of Bailyn, but also of Jack Greene, John Phillip Reid, and Edmund S. Morgan. If any criticism could be offered, she at times relied so greatly upon these predecessors that she perhaps felt too strong a need to assert something additive or distinctive to topics they had addressed. She need not have worried. LaCroix's insightful assertion that the concept of judicial review arising from the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution not only salvaged James Madison's desire for a federal check on state authority but also evolved from a long consideration of federalism as a political idea, constitutes a sufficient academic contribution to distinguish her work from even the greatest of earlier writers.
The author's thesis is that federalism, as ultimately expressed in the United States Constitution and the Judiciary Acts of 1789 and 1801, is a culmination of ideological developments that can be traced through American conceptions of layered or tiered government that percolated within political debates since the 1760s. LaCroix defines federalism as reliance upon a multiplicity of governing institutions that sometimes share authority (overlapping or concurrent authority) and at other times function with distinct responsibilities. She argues that in the American colonies, theorists preferred a division of authority determined by distinct subject matter responsibilities: a preference that ultimately contributed to the rejection of Madison's desire for a congressional “negative” or veto of state legislation, but that could accommodate judicial consideration of legislative actions based on broad constitutional principles.
Following a well-organized first chapter that provides an intellectual and political context for late eighteenth-century discussions of federalism and a valuable historiographic analysis, LaCroix explains that various theories of federalism arose in the 1760s in debates over the authority to tax in the British Empire. Debate centered on distinguishing between internal and external taxes and on whether representation was the key to an authority to tax. Colonists came to recognize parliamentary authority over certain matters, but not others. Despite an expressed intention to root the development of American federalism in ideas and not political expediency, LaCroix at times argues that theories were used in support of pragmatic colonial desires. However, she is careful to acknowledge colonial reliance upon Locke, Montesquieu, Vattel, Grotius, and Pufendorf, and suggests that Americans used their theories as a basis for conceptual understandings of government, to which were added distinct innovations that proceeded from political issues.
LaCroix finds American thought at the time of the Revolution to have been rooted much more in Whig ideas than in late-Enlightenment conceptions of natural rights, meaning that the English Constitution retained its relevance as a focus of debate much longer than other scholars, such as Willi Paul Adams, Mark Hulliung, and even Gordon Wood, believed that it did. Even more significantly, the author minimizes the American development of the idea of popular sovereignty, implicitly taking issue with Bailyn on the importance of this concept. Federalism is less of a concern when one views popular sovereignty as a greater political innovation than tiered or bifurcated authority. In stressing the colonial reliance upon concepts of federalism, LaCroix focuses on competing institutions' claims for sovereignty rather than on the development of a rights orientation that would limit all governmental authority. Accordingly, despite LaCroix's commitment to writing intellectual history, the text at times reads as a conservative defense of institutional authority and pragmatic government rather than an explication of the intellectual roots of arguably the first democratic republic and capitalist society.
Nonetheless, LaCroix's thoughtful analysis both illuminates and encourages a reconsideration of the variations in historical interpretation just outlined. Her insightful presentation of judicial review as the key element in American federalism provides new appreciation of the founders' intentions to establish a nation governed by laws, not men. Her work deserves a careful reading from scholars and a rightful place among that of the earlier authors she so obviously reveres.
