ABSTRACT
In light of the centralizing tendencies of national standards for unenumerated rights, the expectation that the US Supreme Court's ideological pendulum is swinging back toward a renewed judicial federalism is untenable. Each level has its institutional separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The evidence that the Supreme Court is ideologically committed to federalism is inconclusive; to the contrary, neither the role of the states nor that of the state courts in the federal system has substantively changed. In the final analysis claims about a new judicial federalism are, at best, premature, due to the fact that the power relationship between the US and state supreme courts has not significantly changed. The fact that jurisdictional fluidity is endemic to the American judicial process does not mitigate its impact on federalism, which was designed to facilitate popular control over public policy.
