The 10th Amendment Explained

Brittanica: The final of the 10 amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment was inserted into the

Constitution largely to relieve tension and to assuage the fears of states’ rights advocates, who believed that the newly adopted Constitution would enable the federal government to run roughshod over the states and their citizens. While the Federalists, who advocated a strong central government, had in that respect prevailed with the ratification of the Constitution, it was essential to the integrity of the document and to the stability of the fledgling country to acknowledge the interests of the Anti-Federalists, such as Patrick Henry, who had unsuccessfully opposed the strong central government created by the Constitution.

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Whereas the Ninth Amendment provides that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not deny or disparage other unenumerated rights retained by the people, the Tenth Amendment clearly reserves to the states those powers that the Constitution neither delegates to the federal government nor prohibits to the states. The Tenth Amendment does not impose any specific limitations on the authority of the federal government; though there had been an attempt to do so, Congress defeated a motion to modify the word delegated with expressly in the amendment. It thus does not grant states additional powers, nor does it alter the relationship that exists between the federal government and the states. It merely indicates that the states may establish and maintain their own laws and policies so long as they do not conflict with the authority of the federal government.

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