Federalism and the Rehnquist Court

Little more than a year before William Rehnquist became Chief Justice, the Supreme Court decided Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority,(1) in which the Court appeared to bury much of judicially enforceable federalism and to replace it with a politically enforceable brand of federalism. The "structure of the Federal Government itself" was the principal safeguard of state sovereignty, at least as manifested by immunity from congressional exercise of the commerce power.(2) The fact that Congress is composed of state representatives was deemed sufficient to protect state autonomy. "Any substantive [judicial] restraint... must find its justification in the procedural nature of this basic limitation, and it must be tailored to compensate for possible failings in the national political process rather than to dictate a `sacred province of state autonomy."'(3) Three years later, in South Carolina v. Baker,(4) the Court hinted that these procedural "failings" consisted only of such extreme things as depriving a state of "any right to participate in the national political process"(5) or legislation that "single[s] out" a state in