Aaron – The Tenth Amendment

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The Tenth Amendment establishes the boundaries for the power relationship between the states and the federal government. It was added to the Constitution as a mechanism for keeping the federal government in check by allotting most of the power to enact laws in the hands of each state, a system known as federalism. Today, federalism allows diverse political, cultural, and ideological views to be expressed differently based on the preference of the voters in each state. This system also has its downsides, even when most Americans agree on certain issues, the federal government has no way of enforcing these ideas onto states with opposing views.

Due to the tensions between the state and the federal government, this amendment has been the focus of numerous court cases that have more clearly defined the relationship between the state and federal government. For instance, Wickard v. Filburn (1942) was a precedent that showed that the federal government has more power than once thought inside states. The case concerned a Kansas farmer who had produced a surplus of wheat. His wheat was ruled to be a subject of the commerce clause. The court’s decision for this was based on the fact that his surplus was able to influence the price of wheat elsewhere and therefore needed to be regulated under the clause. This clause was originally meant for the federal government to be a mediator in inter-state commerce but resulted in the federal government claiming that every transaction of commerce-related issues could be regulated by them. This interpretation of the Tenth Amendment vastly expanded the boundaries in which the federal government had power as they now were able to regulate almost all commerce.

Recently, judges have started to revert to a more limited central government. The overturning of Roe v. Wade (2022) set a precedent that state and local governments decide all public health issues. Additionally, another very important case with modern applications is Printz v. United States (1997). In this case, the supreme court used the Constitution’s “anti-commandeering” clauses to rule in favor of states’ rights to not enforce federal laws. 

The majority of the time the Tenth Amendment protects people from a super-powerful central government. On the flip side, however, it has also allowed many states to continue to promote things such as racial inequality. During this time the federal government sometimes couldn’t implement laws promoting racial equality in states even when the majority of Americans were in favor of racial equality. This is because the power to regulate these types of laws was given to the state by the Tenth Amendment.

To summarize, the interpretation of the Tenth Amendment has varied dramatically, but it has always set the boundaries between the state and federal governments. Although the Tenth Amendment has not always been used to do good things, it continues to protect people from an all-powerful government and it allows for the diverse views of the people in different states to be expressed.

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