Borders of Stones, Guns, and Grass

Chapter 4 focuses on the Prairies to show how violence served as both a motivation and a tool for federal control. During the 1860s and 1870s, the Red River Resistance (1869), Fenian raids (1866–1871), the continuation of the whiskey trade, and the Cypress Hills Massacre (1873) provided a series of humiliating reminders of the limited power both countries maintained along their shared border. As the Métis resistance and Fenian movements suggested, the Canada–US border was home to more than just two national stories of self-determination and expansion. Securing land cessions, curtailing violence, and controlling space required colonial governments to either understand Indigenous boundaries or destroy them.

Federal Sovereignty

In the territories, the federal government confronted what it regarded as endemic violence between Natives and U.S. citizens based on long-standing racial animosity. At the urging of Secretary of War Henry Knox, the federal government sought to establish itself as a neutral arbiter between both sides, a vision of what the chapter calls federal sovereignty expressed in the Trade and Intercourse Acts. These laws sought to distinguish and separate “Indian country” from “ordinary jurisdiction,” and they established a federal criminal regime to punish both Natives and U.S. citizens who committed crimes against the other, in an effort to replace practices of retaliation. Yet this effort to establish federal sovereignty largely failed. In part, federal officials misunderstood territorial realities, where Natives and whites were entangled by economic and social relationships that could not be easily divided. But they also misunderstood the jurisdictional and institutional limitations within federal law. In particular, their approach converted the question of justice for Natives into a debate over the scope of federal authority in the territories, in which territorial citizens strongly resisted what they regarded as heavy-handed federal control.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Federalism and the Limits of State Sovereignty

This article analyzes Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s commitment to protecting state sovereignty. In contrast to scholars who view Kennedy’s behavior as merely pragmatic or centrist, this article focuses on principles and tensions underlying his liberty-based approach to federalism. From his early career in Sacramento through three decades on the U.S. Supreme Court, Kennedy sought to restore a federalism he considered essential to personal and political liberty but increasingly “endangered.” His opinions extended beyond the constitutional text to protect traditional areas of state concern, state treasuries, and local political decision making against increasing federal control. However, Kennedy subordinated state sovereignty when it interfered with the federal government’s direct relationship to citizens, promoted economic protectionism, and violated his expansive conceptions of constitutional liberty and human dignity. The article concludes by situating Kennedy’s distinctive conception of federalism within the larger Rehnquist and Roberts Courts.

Ellis Island Immigration Station

The Ellis Island Immigration Station, located in New York Harbor, opened in 1892 and closed in 1954. During peak years from the 1890s until the 1920s, the station processed an estimated twelve million immigrants. Roughly 75 percent of all immigrants arriving in America during this period passed through Ellis Island. The station was run by the federal Immigration Service and represented a new era of federal control over immigration. Officials at Ellis Island were tasked with regulating the flow of immigration by enforcing a growing body of federal laws that barred various categories of “undesirable” immigrants. As the number of immigrants coming to America increased, so did the size of the inspection facility. In 1907, Ellis Island processed more than one million immigrants. The quota laws of the 1920s slowed immigration considerably and the rise of the visa system meant that Ellis Island no longer served as the primary immigrant inspection facility. For the next three decades, Ellis Island mostly served as a detention center for those ordered deported from the country. After Ellis Island closed in 1954, the facility fell into disrepair. During a period of low immigration and a national emphasis on assimilation, the immigrant inspection station was forgotten by most Americans. With a revival of interest in ethnicity in the 1970s, Ellis Island attracted more attention, especially from the descendants of immigrants who entered the country through its doors. In the 1980s, large-scale fundraising for the restoration of the neighboring Statue of Liberty led to a similar effort to restore part of Ellis Island. In 1990, the Main Building was reopened to the public as an immigration museum under the National Park Service. Ellis Island has evolved into an iconic national monument with deep meaning for the descendants of the immigrants who arrived there, as well as a contested symbol to other Americans grappling with the realities of contemporary immigration.

Regaining State Control Under Putin

A significant change in the Russian political economy took place from around 2000, coinciding with Vladimir Putin’s election as president. State capture gave way to increased state control in the economy, as Putin’s government moved against non-compliant oligarchs and seized control of strategically important industries. A state holding company, Rosspirtprom, was formed to recover federal control over alcohol assets. The Rosspirtprom project can be seen as part of President Putin’s re-establishment of the “power vertical” (centralised federal control) in view of the high value of alcohol revenues to regional authorities. And yet, far from providing valuable revenues to the federal coffers, Rosspirtprom has consistantly posted losses, despite its ostensibly strong starting position on the market. Where has all the money gone?