The Post Constitutional Era! Part XXXV

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People

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.

Notes for this amendment: Proposed 9/25/1789 - Ratified 12/15/17

This amendment is foundational to the concept of a balance of power, but with the passage of the 16^th and 17^th amendments and insane interpretations of the Interstate Commerce clause the states no longer have any rights with the exception of calling for a Constitutional Convention. 

“The Commerce Clause has been used to justify the use of federal laws in matters that do not on their face implicate interstate trade or exchange. Early on, the Supreme Court ruled that the power to regulate interstate commerce encompassed the power to regulate interstate navigation. Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824). In 1905, the Court used the Commerce Clause to halt price fixing in the Chicago meat industry, when it ruled that Congress had authority to regulate the local meat market under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It found that business done even at a purely local level could become part of a continuous “current” of commerce that involved the interstate movement of goods and services. Swift and Company v. United States, 196 U.S. 375 (1905). Despite these decisions, the Commerce Clause could still effectively be used to limit the federal government’s power, as the early years of the New Deal demonstrated.”

“With the advent of the New Deal, the powers of the federal government expanded into realms—such as regulation of in-state industrial production and worker hours and wages—that would not necessarily be considered “commerce” under the definitions set forth in Gibbons and Swift”…….To Read More….