U.S. federalism interacts with commitments to democratic equality in complex ways. As a matter of current constitutional law and structure, the U.S. Congress is less “representative“ of the national polity as a whole — if representativeness is examined only from a one-person one-vote perspective — than each state legislature is with respect to its state population. Yet the national Congress may be more representative of otherwise neglected minority interests. The talk will explore the implications of this observation for issues of interpretive federalism, that is, the preemptive scope of federal law.