Interstate Agreements in the American Federal System

Abstract

By focusing almost exclusively on that species of interstate agreement designated by the term "compact," scholars of American federalism have obscured the vast network of agreements between states outside of the compact area. In this article, an attempt is made to provide a more comprehensive view of the place of interstate agreements in the American federal system. By reference to statutes, case law, uniform laws and interstate compact and organizational activity, the authors survey a broad range of functional collaborations and agreements of varying degrees of formality. In the process, they develop a heuristic model which should prove useful to both lawyers and political scientists in analyzing the contours of the American pattern of allocation of decision competence in interstate agreements.