The Pros And Cons Of The Tenth Amendment

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The Tenth Amendment was ratified along with the rest of the Bill of Rights on December 17th, 1791, as well, unlike most other amendments, it gave rights not only to the people, but also to the state governments. The Tenth Amendment was passed in order to delegate powers to the state governments and the people that the national government does not have, this amendment states, “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” There was conflict over the Tenth Amendment, as well as with the Constitution and the rest of the Bill of Rights, which was between the two parties at that time: the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. The …show more content…

The arguments behind these party’s opinions on the word is mainly due to their different understandings of the word under their respective proponent. The Federalist side was afraid of the ramifications of the conclusion of the word “expressly” because they believed that it “might be construed to deny the government even those means ‘clearly comprehended’ by the express grant,” as James Madison stated. While on the other hand the Anti-Federalists argued to include the word because they wanted to ensure they could have access to these rights, Thomas Tucker believed that it “was understood that expressly delegated powers allowed for the exercise of all specific powers ‘clearly comprehended within any accurate definition of the general power.’” As shown by the lack of the word “expressly” in the Tenth Amendment, the Anti-Federalists …show more content…

Examples of this include the Supreme Court’s ruling on National League of Cities v Usery in 1976, where it was disputed whether the national government had the authority to set a minimum wage standard for the states to follow, in this particular case’s ruling, the Supreme Court decided no, the national government did not have the right to do so. Nine years later the Supreme overturned this previous ruling in the case of Garcia v San Antonio Metro Transit

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