Week 10 — Write a Federation's Rulebook: Sort the Powers and Settle the Clashes — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 9 of the term — write the power clauses of a made-up federation, settle two clashes between its levels, design its two chambers and their checks, and explain to a neighbor why "supreme" does not mean "unlimited."

This week you learned the three arrangements of power across levels, the enumerated, implied, and reserved powers in the U.S. Constitution's own text, the supremacy clause as a tie-breaker, the checks each branch holds, and McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). Week 6 named federalism and the separation of powers as two different divisions, and Week 9 traced judicial review to Marbury v. Madison (1803); this assignment puts all of it to work on a federation you design. In this assignment you work two short counting problems, interpret each one, and explain the supremacy clause to someone who has never studied American government. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Political Analysis Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will write the core of a constitution for a made-up federation. Treat it as illustrative: it is not a real country, and no real person or current officeholder belongs in it.

Work these two problems, showing how you got each count:

Your made-up federation's constitution lists 6 enumerated powers for its national parliament, and for each listed power you write 2 implied tools that carry it out. How many implied tools do you write?
Your made-up federation's legislature has an upper chamber with 3 members from each of its 8 provinces and a lower chamber of 120 members. How many members does the legislature have in all?

Beside each count, add the interpretation that makes it political science:

Problem 1, the power clauses. Name your 6 enumerated powers and, for one of them, write its 2 implied tools and explain why each is a reasonable tool for that written-down job. Name two powers your constitution leaves to the provinces as reserved powers. Then settle two clashes with a supremacy clause modelled on Article VI ("shall be the supreme Law of the Land"): one in which a valid national law meets a conflicting provincial law, and one in which a national law has no listed or implied power behind it. For each clash, ask first whether the national law is valid and only then which law wins. Finish by naming one tool on your list that a broad reading of "necessary" would allow and a narrow reading would not, and state each reading at full strength, as McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) showed the question can arise.
Problem 2, the chambers and their checks. Say how each chamber is chosen and what your count of members shows about the design. Attach at least three checks to the branches that hold them (for example a veto, confirmation of appointments, the power of the purse, or judicial review), and say for each one which branch it restrains. Then defend your choice of a federal design over a unitary one with at least one premise labelled empirical and one labelled normative, state the strongest case for the unitary design you rejected as its defenders would put it, and give your reply.

Explain it to a non-expert

A neighbor tells you, "The national government can do anything it wants, because national law is supreme." Write a 3–5 sentence message to that neighbor that explains, in everyday words, why the supremacy clause only breaks ties between valid laws, uses one clash from your Problem 1 as the example, and names one limit of what the supremacy clause can tell you on its own. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a lifeguard explaining the deep-end rule at a community pool to a new swimmer. Model answer: "Only swimmers who have passed the swim check may use the deep end, because the water there is over most people's heads. It is not a judgment about you; it is the same check for everyone. If you have not taken it yet, the lifeguard on duty can run it in a few minutes. The limit is that the rule covers the deep end only, so the shallow lanes stay open to all."

Use that pattern for your message to the neighbor, with your own wording and evidence.

Show how you got each count. A reader should be able to reproduce both counts from the values above without guessing which values or steps you used.

After you finish, reread your work and revise at least one power sort, clash, check, or explanation. Then add a short reflection (3–4 sentences) on one of two options of equal weight, your choice: (a) which power sort, clash, or check you changed and why the new version is better; or (b) which clash you first settled by rank alone instead of asking whether the national law was valid, and how you caught it.

Deliverables

Submit a single design file containing:

the two counts, each with the values and the operation shown;
your power clauses (the 6 enumerated powers, 2 implied tools for one of them, two reserved powers, the two clashes settled in order, and the tool sorted under the broad and the narrow reading);
your chamber design (how each chamber is chosen, what the count shows, at least three checks attached to their holders, a defense with premises labelled by kind, the strongest case for the unitary design, and your reply);
your message to the neighbor; and
your revision note with the reflection option you chose.

Keep it to roughly two pages; accuracy and clear reasoning matter more than length.

Choose how you show it. Present your work as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about four minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled diagram of your federation's levels and branches with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the counts, the power clauses, the defense, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Quote only the pinned constitutional and McCulloch fragments, exactly, and keep every example free of living politicians and current officeholders. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's design, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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