The Ninth Amendment offers a constitutional safety net, intended to make it clear that Americans have other fundamental rights beyond those listed in the Bill of Rights. The amendment was added out of concern that it would be impossible to mention every fundamental right, and dangerous to list just some of them for fear of suggesting that the list was complete.
It is up to the courts to interpret through their decisions exactly what rights the amendment does and does not protect. The Tenth Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to preserve the balance of power between the federal government and the states. Those powers not listed are left to each of the states. At different times in American history the courts have been more or less restrictive in deciding what the federal government can do and what responsibilities fall to the states. In , the Virginia legislature enacts similar resolutions, known as the Virginia Resolutions, that were authored by James Madison.
A federal statute seeks to end child labor by prohibiting the interstate shipment of goods that child laborers had produced. In Hammer v. Dagenhart , known as the Child Labor Case, the U. The Court finds that under the Tenth Amendment, it is the right of the individual states to decide how to regulate the use of child labor in manufacturing.
In Schechter Corporation v. United States , the U. Private individuals challenge a contract between the federal government and a local power company for construction of a dam. In Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority , the U. Supreme Court supports the contract as constitutional because the government has acted within the scope of its war and commerce powers under the Constitution.
The Court holds that the Ninth Amendment does not give to the people rights that were specifically given to the government elsewhere in the Constitution.
Dagenhart , the U. Supreme Court rules unanimously in United States v. Supreme Court strikes down a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives because it restricts the right of marital privacy. Although the Bill of Rights does not actually mention privacy, the Court concludes that it is a natural extension of the rights mentioned in the First, Third, and Fourth Amendments. The Court points to the Ninth Amendment as further evidence that a right does not need to be spelled out in the Constitution to be considered fundamental.
In Roe v. In , in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority , a narrow majority of the Supreme Court held that a city was required to comply with federal labor laws, and that state sovereignty interests should be protected by the participation of states in the national political process, rather than by judicially-enforced principles of federalism.
However, while Garcia has never been explicitly overruled, in subsequent cases the Court has indeed found judicially-enforceable limits on the power of the federal government to regulate states and their political subdivisions directly.
United States , forcing state or local executive officials to implement federal laws, Printz v. Dole Interestingly, the Tenth Amendment has not been invoked by the Court to protect individual citizens against the exercise of federal power.
Whether the Tenth Amendment actually is, or ought to be, serving as an independent source of constitutional principles of federalism is a matter of great controversy, both on and off the Court. When initially added to the United States Constitution, the Tenth Amendment stood as a reminder of the continuing importance of states and of the foundational role of the people.
The Amendment was significant not for the text it supplied, but for the structure it emphasized. That structure has evolved over time. Recently, the United States Supreme Court has sought to revive the Amendment, with unfortunate results. The Court has found in the Amendment a license to create new barriers to the exercise of national authority, barriers that lack foundation in the text or structure of the Constitution or in sound policies of federalism.
In the early part of the Twentieth Century, the Supreme Court relied on the Tenth Amendment in resisting expanded assertions of national power.
However, during the New Deal, Congress enacted a range of federal regulatory programs, such as Social Security, designed to stabilize the economy, protect workers, and promote the general welfare. Constitutional law. After a brief reemergence, the Tenth Amendment went back underground in , before returning, apparently to stay, in Good reasons existed for the disappearance of the Tenth Amendment.
The Tenth Amendment suffered from the assertion that the powers reserved to the states included the power to enforce racial inequality. Politically, socially, and morally, the Tenth Amendment seemed to speak to the past, not the present or the future. Along similar lines, the Court invoked the Eleventh Amendment to limit the ability of Congress to subject states to suit in federal court, even for claims that the states were violating federal law.
Even while reinvigorating the Tenth Amendment in New York v. In its current incarnation, however, the function of the Tenth Amendment is to impose a non-textual limit on the use of federal power. The Court has held that even when the federal government is regulating interstate commerce, as authorized by Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, the federal government still may not invade certain protected enclaves of state sovereignty.
For example, in New York v. United States , the Court held that the Tenth Amendment prohibited Congress from enacting a comprehensive plan for the disposal of radioactive waste that required states to assume responsibility for the disposal of waste within their borders.
That reading runs counter to the text of the Tenth Amendment. By way of policy justification, the Court has suggested that it must draw clear lines between domains of state and federal authority.
The blurring of federal and state functions, the Court asserts, would undermine the accountability of government officials. The citizens would not know to which government entity they should address policy concerns.
Scholars have questioned the empirical underpinnings of this line of argument. Are people really so easily confused? Moreover, given the extensive overlap of state and federal power in so many areas, how important is it that some area of state exclusivity be maintained?
Citizens would need a fairly sharp sense of discernment to know which would be the few areas in which the federal government was immune from responsibility.
The basic problem is that the language of the Tenth Amendment appears to assume a clear demarcation of state and federal domains of authority. The areas of society subject to federal regulation have grown significantly over time.
The good news is that federalism is alive and well in the United States today. States remain vital centers of policy debate and experimentation. State and federal power intersects and overlaps in many ways that promote the well-being of the people. Federal and state courts and legislatures engaged in a dialogue that eventually resulted in the recognition of a national right. However, this federalism does not rely on outdated notions of exclusive areas of state sovereignty.
For the moment, these exclusive state domains remain relatively small, offering little resistance to the exercise of enumerated federal powers. Should the Court expand these enclaves, however, current Tenth Amendment doctrine would become a more significant, and pernicious, force.
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