The Tenther movement is a social movement in the United States, whose adherents espouse the political ideology that the federal government's enumerated powers must be read very narrowly to exclude much of what the federal government already does, citing the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in support of this. [1] The text of the amendment reads:
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. [2]
Despite the movement's assertions, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Tenth Amendment such that the Amendment does not require a narrow interpretation of the federal government's enumerated powers. Instead, the Court holds that the powers of the federal government derive from the states voluntarily surrendering part of their sovereign powers. This view was reiterated in United States v. Darby Lumber in which the Court stated that the Tenth Amendment "states but a truism that all [powers of the State Sovereign] is retained which has not been surrendered [by ratification of the Constitution and membership in the United States]". In summary, members of the Tenther Movement believe that the Tenth Amendment should be interpreted as requiring that the federal government's enumerated powers be construed narrowly. In contrast, the Supreme Court interprets the Tenth Amendment as a default rule. In the absence of enumerated federal power, each state is the supreme sovereign of its own territory, but that this rule has no bearing on interpreting the scope of an enumerated federal power (e.g. the power to make uniform bankruptcy law).
Tenthers oppose a broad range of federal government programs, including the war on drugs, federal surveillance and other limitations on privacy and civil and economic liberties, plus numerous New Deal legislation to Great Society legislation such as Medicaid, Medicare, the VA health system and the G.I. Bill. [1]
The Tenther movement is distinct from libertarianism, although adherents of the two philosophies often have similar positions. Whereas libertarians oppose programs such as the war on drugs on ideological grounds, seeing them as unjustified government intrusion into lives of its citizens, Tenthers hold that such programs may be perfectly acceptable, but only when implemented by individual states.
Tenthers argue for the recognition of limited sovereignty of the states. [3] Opponents use the term in order to draw parallels between adherents and 19th century states' rights secessionists as well as the movement to resist federal civil rights legislation. [4] Tentherism was also one of the justifications cited by pro-slavery advocate John Calhoun before the Civil War. [5]
Joni Ernst, a Republican Senator since 2015, [6] said in a September 2013 forum held by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition while she was a member of the Iowa Senate that Congress should not bother to pass laws "that the states would consider nullifying", referring to what she describes as "200-plus years of federal legislators going against the Tenth Amendment's states' rights". [5] Ernst's statements were criticized in an article published by the United Press International on the grounds that they were based upon a misunderstanding of Tenth Amendment case law. [5]
In a weblog post for Reason , journalist Radley Balko objected to the name Tenther as the term originated as a pejorative used by those opposed to the movement's ideas in an attempt to reference and draw parallels to conspiratorial movements such as Birthers and Truthers. [7]
In 2013 and 2014, the group successfully introduced bills in state legislatures based on the model act the Fourth Amendment Protection Act. The intent of the bills was to prevent state governments from co-operating with the National Security Agency's mass surveillance projects, by forbidding state universities from doing NSA research or from hosting NSA recruiters, or preventing the provision of water to NSA facilities. Bills were introduced in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, Utah, Washington, and Arizona. [8] [9] [10] [11]
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799 in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. The resolutions argued that the states had the right and the duty to declare unconstitutional those acts of Congress that the Constitution did not authorize. In doing so, they argued for states' rights and strict construction of the Constitution. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 were written secretly by Vice President Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively.
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the frame of the federal government. The Constitution's first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, in which the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress ; the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers ; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Article IV, Article V, and Article VI embody concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments, the states in relationship to the federal government, and the shared process of constitutional amendment. Article VII establishes the procedure subsequently used by the 13 states to ratify it. The Constitution of the United States is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force in the world.
Article One of the Constitution of the United States establishes the legislative branch of the federal government, the United States Congress. Under Article One, Congress is a bicameral legislature consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Article One grants Congress various enumerated powers and the ability to pass laws "necessary and proper" to carry out those powers. Article One also establishes the procedures for passing a bill and places various limits on the powers of Congress and the states from abusing their powers.
The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution addresses rights, retained by the people, that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. It is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment was introduced during the drafting of the Bill of Rights when some of the American founders became concerned that future generations might argue that, because a certain right was not listed in the Bill of Rights, it did not exist. However, the Ninth Amendment has rarely played any role in U.S. constitutional law, and until the 1980s was often considered "forgotten" or "irrelevant" by many legal academics.
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791. It expresses the principle of federalism, also known as states' rights, by stating that the federal government has only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution, and that all other powers not forbidden to the states by the Constitution are reserved to each state, or to the people.
McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that defined the scope of the U.S. Congress's legislative power and how it relates to the powers of American state legislatures. The dispute in McCulloch involved the legality of the national bank and a tax that the state of Maryland imposed on it. In its ruling, the Supreme Court established firstly that the "Necessary and Proper" Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. federal government certain implied powers necessary and proper for the exercise of the powers enumerated explicitly in the Constitution, and secondly that the American federal government is supreme over the states, and so states' ability to interfere with the federal government is restricted. Since the legislature has the authority to tax and spend, the court held that it therefore has authority to establish a national bank, as being "necessary and proper" to that end.
The federal government of the United States is the common government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, comprising 50 states, five major self-governing territories, several island possessions, and the federal district of Washington, D.C., where the majority of the federal government is based.
In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment. The enumerated powers that are listed in the Constitution include exclusive federal powers, as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are contrasted with the reserved powers—also called states' rights—that only the states possess. Since the 1940s, the term "states' rights" has often been considered a loaded term or dog whistle because of its use in opposition to federally-mandated racial desegregation and, more recently, same-sex marriage and reproductive rights.
The Preamble to the United States Constitution, beginning with the words We the People, is a brief introductory statement of the US Constitution's fundamental purposes and guiding principles. Courts have referred to it as reliable evidence of the Founding Fathers' intentions regarding the Constitution's meaning and what they hoped the Constitution would achieve.
Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920) is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the extent to which international legal obligations are incorporated into federal law under the United States Constitution.
The enumerated powers of the United States Congress are the powers granted to the federal government of the United States by the United States Constitution. Most of these powers are listed in Article I, Section 8.
Dual federalism, also known as layer-cake federalism or divided sovereignty, is a political arrangement in which power is divided between the federal and state governments in clearly defined terms, with state governments exercising those powers accorded to them without interference from the federal government. Dual federalism is defined in contrast to cooperative federalism, in which federal and state governments collaborate on policy.
Nullification, in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal laws which they deem unconstitutional with respect to the United States Constitution. There are similar theories that any officer, jury, or individual may do the same. The theory of state nullification has never been legally upheld by federal courts, although jury nullification has.
For the government of India, Part XI of the Constitution of India – consists of Articles on Relations between the Union and States.
Bond v. United States, 564 U.S. 211 (2011), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that individuals, just like states, may have standing to raise Tenth Amendment challenges to a federal law.
United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), is a 4-to-3 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Hatch Act of 1939, as amended in 1940, does not violate the First, Fifth, Ninth, or Tenth amendments to U.S. Constitution.
The constitutional law of the United States is the body of law governing the interpretation and implementation of the United States Constitution. The subject concerns the scope of power of the United States federal government compared to the individual states and the fundamental rights of individuals. The ultimate authority upon the interpretation of the Constitution and the constitutionality of statutes, state and federal, lies with the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States establishes that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority, constitute the "supreme Law of the Land", and thus take priority over any conflicting state laws. It provides that state courts are bound by, and state constitutions subordinate to, the supreme law. However, federal statutes and treaties must be within the parameters of the Constitution; that is, they must be pursuant to the federal government's enumerated powers, and not violate other constitutional limits on federal power, such as the Bill of Rights—of particular interest is the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that the federal government has only those powers that are delegated to it by the Constitution. It is the responsibility of the United States Supreme Court in that case to exercise the power of judicial review: the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution.
The Arizona Fourth Amendment Protection Act is a bill proposed in the Arizona legislature that would withdraw state support for collection of metadata and ban the use of warrantless data in courts.
Several US States have introduced various resolutions and legislation in protest to federal actions. Despite this, the Supreme Court has explicitly rejected the idea that the states can nullify federal law. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), the Supreme Court of the United States held that federal law prevails over state law due to the operation of the Supremacy Clause, and that federal law "can neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial officers nor nullified indirectly by them through evasive schemes ..." Thus, state laws purporting to nullify federal statutes or to exempt states and their citizens from federal statutes have only symbolic impact.
Arizona Sen. Kelli Ward announced Monday that she will act to ban the National Security Agency from unconstitutional operations in her state. Ward describes her nullification legislation, the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, as a pre-emptive strike against the embattled agency.[ dead link ]
The Utah bill aims to prohibit state and local agencies from providing water to a giant new NSA data center near Salt Lake City.[ dead link ]
Blocks public universities from serving as NSA research facilities or recruiting grounds.
