Federal Criminal Jurisdiction

Since the founding of the United States, the authority to define and punish crimes has been divided between the states and the federal government. Before the Civil War the United States exercised jurisdiction over only a narrow class of cases in which the federal interest was clearly dominant if not exclusive. Since the Civil War, federal criminal jurisdiction has been gradually expanding to subjects previously the exclusive province of the states. Because the bulk of these provisions have been intended to supplement state law and not to supersede, the overlap between federal and state jurisdictions has been increasing.