  We review the fermionic Chern-Simons field theory for the Fractional Quantum
Hall Effect (FQHE). We show that in this field theoretic approach to the
problem of interacting electrons moving in a plane in the presence of an
external magnetic field, the FQHE states appear naturally as the semiclassical
states of the theory. In this framework, the FQHE states are the unique ground
states of a system of electrons on a fixed geometry. The excitation spectrum is
fully gapped and these states can be viewed as infrared stable fixed points of
the system. It is shown that the long distance, low energy properties of the
system are described exactly by this theory. It is further shown that, in this
limit, the actual ground state wave function has the Laughlin form. We also
discuss the application of this theory to the problem of the FQHE in bilayers
and in unpolarized single layer systems.
