The Grievance Audit holds the modern federal record up against the twenty-seven grievances of the Declaration of Independence. This entry covers the cluster about a distant power restructuring local self-government from above. Quote the grievances, quote what the Founders built, lay out today’s record with citations. Terms per Black’s Law Dictionary. Reporting on documents, not legal advice.
The grievances
Several charges share one fear — a remote central authority rewriting the terms of self-rule:
“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.” (para. 8) “For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments” (para. 22) “For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.” (para. 23) “For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province…” (para. 21 — the Quebec Act) — Declaration of Independence (1776)
The dread is concentrated in one phrase: a distant government “invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.” Unlimited central power over local life was the shape of the tyranny.
What the Founders built
Their answer was the defining structural choice of the Constitution — a central government of enumerated, and therefore limited, powers, with the rest reserved to the states and the people:
- U.S. Const. art. I, § 8: lists the specific powers of Congress. A list is a limit; what is not listed is not granted.
- U.S. Const. amend. X: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution… are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
- U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2 (the Supremacy Clause): within its proper sphere, federal law is supreme — the necessary counterweight, so the union is not powerless.
The design rejects “all cases whatsoever” by definition: the federal government was to have some cases, enumerated, not all.
The terms, per Black’s
- Federalism — Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024): the legal relationship and distribution of power between the national and regional (state) governments.
- Preemption — per Black’s, the doctrine by which federal law displaces conflicting or overlapping state law.
- Anticommandeering — the principle that the federal government may not compel states to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program.
The record today
The literal grievances are answered — no one revokes state charters. No distant authority abolishes a state’s constitution or dissolves its legislature. States write their own laws, run their own courts, and structure their own governments. On its face, this cluster is another founding success: the form of self-government the grievances defended is intact in all fifty states.
But “in all cases whatsoever” describes the reach of federal power more than the Founders would have believed possible. Across the twentieth century, the enumerated powers — especially the Commerce Clause and the Spending Clause — expanded to touch nearly every corner of American life, domains once considered purely local. The federal government now regulates, funds, and preempts state law on a scale that would have astonished the generation that wrote “reserved to the States.” The list of federal powers is still a list; it has just been read very generously.
The courts, though, still enforce real limits — the line is contested, not erased. The Constitution’s federalism is not a dead letter:
- Under the anticommandeering doctrine, the federal government cannot force states to administer federal programs — New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992), and Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997).
- It cannot use federal funds to coerce states beyond a point — NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012), struck down the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid-expansion mandate as unconstitutionally coercive.
- It cannot commandeer a state’s legislative choices — Murphy v. NCAA, 584 U.S. 453 (2018).
So the modern record is genuinely mixed: federal power is vastly broader than the Founders imagined, and the Court still polices an outer boundary that says the government does not legislate “in all cases whatsoever.” Both are true.
By the numbers
- Enumerated + reserved — the constitutional design (art. I, § 8; amend. X): listed federal powers, the rest to the states (U.S. Const.)
- 50 — state governments that still write their own constitutions and laws; the literal grievances answered
- 1992 / 1997 / 2012 / 2018 — New York, Printz, NFIB, Murphy: the modern cases enforcing real federalism limits on federal power (U.S. Supreme Court)
- Vast but bounded — the honest one-line verdict on the reach of federal power today
The counterweight
State both sides, because this one genuinely has two. To the charge that federal power has swollen past recognition: the Constitution was written to create a stronger national government than the failed Articles of Confederation allowed, the Supremacy Clause exists precisely so federal law can override state law within its sphere, and a continental nation with an integrated economy plainly needs national authority the framers of a coastal agrarian republic could not have detailed in advance. Broad federal power is not the grievance’s tyranny; it is often the union working as intended. To the charge that federalism is dead: the anticommandeering and coercion cases above show it is not — the Court repeatedly tells Congress there are things it cannot make states do. The system, defenders say, has found a defensible middle: a powerful national government that is still, at the margins, a limited one.
Fair on both counts. The audit’s finding is simply the tension itself: the Founders built a government of listed powers to foreclose rule “in all cases whatsoever,” and the modern government wields powers so broad that only a contested judicial boundary now marks where “whatsoever” stops.
The audit
These grievances feared a distant power that could revoke charters, abolish local law, and claim authority over “all cases whatsoever.” The 2026 record answers the literal fear — states govern themselves, their charters secure — while testing the deeper one: federal power now reaches nearly everything, checked at the edges by a handful of federalism doctrines the Court still enforces. The forms of self-government stand. How much they still decide is the argument that never ends.
Expressio unius est exclusio alterius — to name some is to exclude the rest. The Founders named the federal government’s powers precisely so the list would have an end. The modern question is only how far past the list the reading may stretch before the words stop meaning anything.
Next in the series: the finale — the war grievances, the ones that don’t map, and an honest reckoning with the Declaration itself.
Sources:
- Declaration of Independence (1776) — National Archives transcript
- U.S. Const. art. I, § 8; art. VI; amend. X — enumerated powers, supremacy, reserved powers
- New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) — anticommandeering
- Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997) — anticommandeering
- NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012) — Spending Clause coercion limit
- Murphy v. NCAA, 584 U.S. 453 (2018) — anticommandeering
- Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024) — definitions: federalism; preemption; anticommandeering