Cite as: 527 U. S. 666 (1999)
Breyer, J., dissenting
citizens of governmental decisionmaking authority. See B. Constant, Political Writings 307 (B. Fontana transl. 1988) (de-scribing the "Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns"). The ancient world understood the need to divide sovereign power among a nation's citizens, thereby creating government in which all would exercise that power; and they called "free" the citizens who exercised that power so divided. Our Nation's Founders understood the same, for they wrote a Constitution that divided governmental authority, that retained great power at state and local levels, and which foresaw, indeed assumed, democratic citizen participation in government at all levels, including levels that facilitated citizen participation closer to a citizen's home.
In today's world, legislative flexibility is necessary if we are to protect this kind of liberty. Modern commerce and the technology upon which it rests need large markets and seek government large enough to secure trading rules that permit industry to compete in the global marketplace, to prevent pollution that crosses borders, and to assure adequate protection of health and safety by discouraging a regulatory "race to the bottom." Yet local control over local decisions remains necessary. Uniform regulatory decisions about, for example, chemical waste disposal, pesticides, or food labeling, will directly affect daily life in every locality. But they may reflect differing views among localities about the relative importance of the wage levels or environmental preferences that underlie them. Local control can take account of such concerns and help to maintain a sense of community despite global forces that threaten it. Federalism matters to ordinary citizens seeking to maintain a degree of control, a sense of community, in an increasingly interrelated and complex world.
Courts can remain sensitive to these needs when they interpret statutes and apply constitutional provisions, for example, the dormant Commerce Clause. But courts cannot easily draw the proper basic lines of authority. The proper
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