by Jacyn Dawes
Since the 1940s, Spades has been one of the most popular card games. The premise of the game is to estimate how many hands you are going to win before the round begins. The highest card wins, with the ace being the highest card, unless someone trumps it.
As the name suggests, spades are the trump cards. Even if everyone plays a diamond, including the ace of diamonds, someone could swoop in with the two of spades and win the hand. Whether it be card games or the classic “Go ask you mom” line, this idea of the trump card exists in our everyday lives. One of the large-scaled examples of this is state versus federal laws. Often, individual states can make decisions in their laws that contradict existing federal laws. When this happens, who holds the ‘trump card?’
Some laws that the federal government handles include civil rights, immigration law, and social security. Letting states implement their own laws is a way for the people to have laws that better represent their rights, especially since there are fewer people those laws represent. Some state-decided topics include criminal issues, family matters, real estate, and business matters. Local laws take this one step farther. This does mean that there are many instances where the states implement a law that contradicts the government. The big topic that comes to mind is marijuana.
More states are choosing to legalize marijuana, while the federal government has yet to make that step. When situations like this happen, the federal government does have the king of spades card, called the Supremacy Clause. As a part of the U.S. Constitution, the goal of the Supremacy Clause is not to tell states what laws to make, but rather give the federal government the ability to have the deciding vote when laws contradict. This raises the question: why, then, are states allowed to pass these laws in the first place?
A lot of this can be directed back to enforcement. Enforcement can cause a lot of gray area with the Supremacy Clause because that enforcement falls back on the federal government. While states do not have to enforce the laws, they are also not allowed to stop federal authorities that are. There is, however, one card that can trump the king of spades. If the laws contradict, those under prosecution could take matters to the courts and attempt to declare the law unconstitutional. The rights listed in the constitution hold the ultimate trump card, the ace of spades. Overall, states have the ability to give their people rights that better represent them. But at the end of the day, we are one nation. As long as those laws remain constitutional, the federal government does have the deciding vote.
If you want to research federal and state laws, regulations, and court decisions, please visit https://www.usa.gov/how-laws-are-made. On their website, they have links to many different resources such as the Code of Federal Regulations and the Law Library of Congress.
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USA Gov (n.d.). How Laws are Made and How to Research Them. Retrieved from https://www.usa.gov/how-laws-are-made
Jacyn Dawes is a Graduate Assistant at the Gwartney Institute and an MBA student at Ottawa University
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