The Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania is supporting a joint resolution pertaining to the 10th Amendment, currently circulating in the State’s legislature. According to the article:
The resolution reaffirms the critical separation of powers between the federal and state governments. The 10th Amendment states that “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.”
You can read the full article here. Source: OpEdNews.
No, that’s not what the 9th amendment is about.
Although I certainly agree that individuals have rights that states should not be able to take away, it doesn’t automatically follow that the federal government, any more than, say, the UN, should be the agency determining when that happens and correcting those injustices.
Nor does it follow that the authors of the constitution believed so, either.
In fact, I know of no constitutional scholars who believe that was the intent of the 10th Amendment.
No one advocated such a view point until an after-the-fact reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment several decades after it was passed.
The constitution spelled out what powers the states were delegating to the federal government. Each state has its own constitution which limits the powers that the people of that state supposedly have delegated to the state.
Agreed, Ian.
The Libertarians seem to miss the same critical language in the 10th Amendment that the Supreme Court misses: “or to the people” that means it is not merely about states rights, it is about my rights as an individual citizen that the states are not empowered to legislate away.