Federalism : mature and emergent

Federalism, like the companion Columbia Bicentennial symposium on the metropolis in modern life, presents the problem of the free man seeking to achieve the utmost good he can from each of the inevitably mingled ele ments of centralization and decentralization. The protean nature of federalism draws the analysis upward through all levels of political association.

The content of federalism invites collaboration among disciplines, par ticularly of students and practitioners of the law and political science. In planning this symposium invaluable help was given by Professor Herbert Wechsler of the Columbia Law School at every stage in conceiving the ob jectives and methods of inquiry. Acknowledgment is also made of the sug gestive preliminary work done by Professor David B. Truman of the Faculty of Political Science.

Illustrations of the realities of a maturing federal system at work could be drawn from almost any field of policy and administration. In view of the fact that another Bicentennial symposium deals with such welfare domains as social security, education, and health, the functional studies that are part of the analysis in this volume are devoted to agriculture, land and water re sources, and trade regulation, while the field of labor relations is used to exemplify the degree of central legislative responsibility for the division of jurisdiction among the levels of government.