Amendment X

"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."

Comments by Nate Segal

The Tenth Amendment has become known as the "reserved powers clause" of the Constitution.

Although the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, it establishes a government of limited rule and power. This Amendment balances the wording of Article VI:

"This Constitution ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land."

These words from Article VI are called the "supremacy clause."

The Framers intended that our country have a federal system. They disagreed over how strong the federal government should be. The Tenth Amendment prevents the federal government from grabbing too much power from the states.

Some Americans today argue that the federal government has become too strong. They may be right in principle. Nonetheless, many of us have benefitted from the federal programs of healthcare for the elderly and indigent — Medicare and Medicaid. Often, these "entitlements" place burdens on states that seem unfair. So I see merit in the argument that the federal government has been growing at the expense of the states.

(In the case of Medicare, for example, the federal government has entered what some would say is the arena of businesses. I'm not addressing this issue here with the Tenth Amendment.)

Many of us have benefitted from civil rights legislation which is arguably but deliberately intrusive into the purview of the states. Keep in mind, though, that the earliest civil rights legislation dates back to the administration of President Abraham Lincoln. So the issue of states' rights has been vexing our nation since the time of log cabins and mules pulling plows.