Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Ninth and Tenth Amendments

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"hap, One from 2009 - Rally 'Round the "True Constitution" .. not.
"ab, it is precisely the constitution that undercut Roe
The Tenth Amendment says that the Federal Government only has those powers delegated in the
Constitution. If it isn't listed, it belongs to the states or to the people[
[...] F6 .. Rally 'Round the "True Constitution" .. not ..
Convinced that the 10th Amendment of the Constitution prohibits
spending programs and regulations? Conservatives have a movement for you.
[...] Almost a year after she called for an investigation to discover which members of Congress are "anti-American," Minnesota's nuttiest lawmaker is back. In a recent appearance with Fox's Sean Hannity, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann accused her colleagues of "forg[etting] what the Constitution says" because they are poised to pass comprehensive health-care reform. Not to be outdone, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina told right-wing activists on a conference call last Thursday that health reform violates the 10th Amendment; he also called on state legislators and governors to "champion individual freedom" by resisting the bill. Two Florida lawmakers beat DeMint to the punch, having already introduced legislation to block health reform from taking effect in their state.
P - These efforts are all part of a movement whose members are convinced that the 10th Amendment of the Constitution prohibits spending programs and regulations disfavored by conservatives. Indeed, while "birther" conspiracy theorists dominate the airwaves with tales of a mystical Kenyan baby smuggled into Hawaii just days after his birth, these "tenther" constitutionalists offer a theory that is no less radical but infinitely more dangerous.
P - Tentherism, in a nutshell, proclaims that New Deal-era reformers led an unlawful coup against the "True Constitution," exploiting Depression-born desperation to expand the federal government's powers beyond recognition. Under the tenther constitution, Barack Obama's health-care reform is forbidden, as is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The federal minimum wage is a crime against state sovereignty; the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local businesses.
P- Tenthers divine all this from the brief language of the 10th Amendment,..."
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Baltimore Sun •Dec 14, 1991 at 12:00 am

The decision to amend the Constitution with a Bill of Rights was opposed by many Americans in 1787-1791. This was not because they opposed citizens' being guaranteed specific, enumerated rights, but because they feared that later presidents, congresses and judges might say the list was exclusive. So the Ninth and Tenth amendments were added.

The Ninth Amendment says, "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The Tenth Amendment says, "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 the people."

One legal scholar has written that these two amendments really just say of the eight that precede them, "We mean it!"

A generation after the Framers, the Tenth Amendment became the "states' rights amendment." Opponents of a strong federal government and of federal supremacy successfully invoked it often in the 19th century, not only before the Civil War but after it. As late as the 1930s the Supreme Court was denying Congress' right to enact laws some states opposed.

That changed, and the Tenth Amendment appeared to be dead -- until the 1970s, when Supreme Court decisions started citing it, and references to "federalism" appeared more often. Some conservatives expect the present court to continue to breathe life back into the Tenth Amendment until it is as robust as it once was.

Some liberals hope someone will breathe life back into the Ninth Amendment. That is because it may be the only way to rescue the right to privacy in general and the right to abortion in particular.

No Supreme Court decision has ever relied on the Ninth Amendment. But in the 1965 case that prepared the way for Roe vs. Wade, Justice Arthur Goldberg, a liberal Democrat, wrote a concurring opinion saying that "fundamental personal rights" nowhere mentioned in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights exist, derived from "the traditions, conscience and experiences and principles which lie at the base of our civil and political institutions."

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1991-12-14-1991348028-story.html

See also:

hap, Constitutional Myth #7: The 10th Amendment Protects 'States' Rights'
[...]
Not long before he was sworn in as a new member of the Senate, Tea Party favorite Mike Lee gave a speech ..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/14/mike-lee-child-labor-laws_n_809100.html ..
in Draper, Utah, about the horrors of federal legislation in the Progressive Era.
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