Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Thomas, J., dissenting
which existed before." Ante, at 802. From the fact that the States had not previously enjoyed any powers over the particular institutions of the Federal Government established by the Constitution,3 the majority derives a rule precisely opposite to the one that the Amendment actually prescribes: " '[T]he states can exercise no powers whatsoever, which exclusively spring out of the existence of the national government, which the constitution does not delegate to them.' " Ibid. (quoting 1 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 627 (3d ed. 1858)).
The majority's essential logic is that the state governments could not "reserve" any powers that they did not control at the time the Constitution was drafted. But it was not the state governments that were doing the reserving. The Constitution derives its authority instead from the consent of the people of the States. Given the fundamental principle that all governmental powers stem from the people of the States, it would simply be incoherent to assert that the people of the States could not reserve any powers that they had not previously controlled.
The Tenth Amendment's use of the word "reserved" does not help the majority's position. If someone says that the power to use a particular facility is reserved to some group, he is not saying anything about whether that group has previously used the facility. He is merely saying that the peo-3 At the time of the framing, of course, a Federal Congress had been operating under the Articles of Confederation for some 10 years. The States unquestionably had enjoyed the power to establish qualifications for their delegates to this body, above and beyond the qualifications created by the Articles themselves. See Brief for Respondents Bobbie E. Hill et al. 39, n. 79 (conceding this point); see also, e. g., Md. Const. of 1776, Art. XXVII (prescribing such qualifications), in 3 Federal and State Constitutions 1695-1696 (F. Thorpe ed. 1909) (hereinafter Thorpe); N. H. Const. of 1784, Pt. II (same), in 4 Thorpe 2467. It is surprising, then, that the concurring opinion seeks to buttress the majority's case by stressing the continuing applicability of "the same republican principles" that had prevailed under the Articles. See ante, at 839.
851
Page: Index Previous 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007