Tenth Amendment

American  

noun

1. an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing to the states and the people those rights that are not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.

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Usage

What is the Tenth Amendment? The Tenth Amendment is an amendment to the US Constitution that says that any right the Constitution does not specifically give to the federal government belongs to the states. The Constitution of the United States is the document that serves as the  fundamental law of the country. An amendment is a change to something. An amendment to the Constitution is any text added to the original document since its ratification in 1788. The Constitution has been amended 27 times in American history. The Tenth 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.”Similar to the Ninth Amendment, the Tenth Amendment doesn’t grant citizens any specific rights. The Tenth Amendment has been interpreted to mean that the states have all rights not specifically forbidden them or not given to the federal government by the Constitution (the concept of federalism). For example, the state of Missouri can regulate its own school system, but it cannot declare war on France. Most Supreme Court cases involving the Tenth Amendment have had to do with taxes, policing, property ownership, and interstate commerce. In general, Tenth Amendment Supreme Court cases have been centered around if, how, and when the national government has the power to involve itself in states’ affairs. In modern Supreme Court Tenth Amendment cases, the Court has often sided with the states and limited the ability of the federal government to regulate state.

Example Sentences

“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Breyer wrote.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 14, 2025

The courts have generally read the Tenth Amendment as merely stating, as Chief Justice Harlan Stone put it, a “truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.”

From Textbooks • Jul. 28, 2021

The Tenth Amendment states that “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.”

From Washington Times • Nov. 28, 2020

While Congress can criminalize activities that harm the federal government, implicate foreign relations, and affect interstate commerce, whether to criminalize purely local activity is a power reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment.

From Slate • Apr. 10, 2020

The Tenth Amendment declares that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states."

From Problems in American Democracy by Williamson, Thames Ross