Читать книгу Employment Law Update - Jonathan Ingber - Страница 32

Divided government raises a host of issues. It sounds a bit inefficient, but then totalitarian government is the quintessence of efficiency. Remembering that ultimate sovereignty rests with the people, how shall their agents be organized? To what extent shall the federal government be superior to all the separate governments of the states; over which specific areas shall this limited government reign supreme? Professor Belz²⁰ has expressed the following salient thoughts on the concept of federalism: “If sovereignty was supreme authority, it was by definition destroyed when divided. It was illogical and irrational to contemplate a government within a government²¹as Americans did in suggesting that within the empire, side by side with Parliament's power over commerce and other general matters, the colonial assemblies possessed sovereignty in local affairs.” The development of federalism is a continuous, unending process.²²

So how does federalism affect the huge field of employment and labor law? There is an argument that state law should be permitted to play a complementary role in all of those areas of workplace regulation where federal law is silent or absent.