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Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
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| •Key terms • Court cases •Major arguments • State responses to federal mandates • Federalism by the numbers • Index of articles about federalism |
The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the U.S. Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It says any power the Constitution does not explicitly delegate to the federal government or prohibit states from exercising belongs to state governments or individuals.[1][2]
Background
The Bill of Rights resulted from compromises between federalist and anti-federalist framers of the Constitution of the United States.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was convened to solve the problems related to the weak national government under the Articles of Confederation. Prominent federalists like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay advocated for a completely new government under the United States Constitution. Anti-federalists like Patrick Henry, Melancton Smith, and George Clinton argued that the national government proposed under the Constitution would be too powerful and would infringe on individual liberties. They thought the Articles of Confederation needed amended, not replaced.[3][4]
Although the federalists succeeded in passing the Constitution, anti-federalists won compromises and successfully advocated for the addition of the Bill of Rights, which they thought would protect individual freedoms and rights from national power. Federalists objected to the addition of the Bill of Rights because they believed it was unnecessary given the enumerated powers of the federal government. Federalists thought the Bill of Rights would undermine the enumerated limits of the government and that the identification of specific rights could give the national government the grounds to destroy rights that were not specifically identified.[3][4]
The Tenth Amendment was designed to explicitly confirm the implicit understanding of the American federalist structure under the limited national government the Framers established. The amendment reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."[5]
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Cornell Law School, "Tenth Amendment," accessed July 28, 2021
- ↑ Cornell Law School, "RESERVED POWERS," accessed July 28, 2021
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedanti - ↑ 4.0 4.1 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedfedpapers - ↑ Constitution Annotated, "Amdt10.1 Tenth Amendment: Historical Background," accessed February 22, 2022
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