Cite as: 531 U. S. 510 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
appropriate at the outset to review the distinction in kind between powers reserved to the States and those delegated to the States by the Constitution.
As we discussed at length in U. S. Term Limits, the Constitution "draws a basic distinction between the powers of the newly created Federal Government and the powers retained by the pre-existing sovereign States." 514 U. S., at 801. On the one hand, in the words of Chief Justice Marshall, "it was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from the people of America, but from the people of the several States; and remain, after the adoption of the constitution, what they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by that instrument." Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122, 193 (1819). The text of the Tenth Amendment delineates this principle:
"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."
On the other hand, as Justice Story observed, "the states can exercise no powers whatsoever, which exclusively spring out of the existence of the national government, which the constitution did not delegate to them." 1 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 627 (3d ed. 1858) (hereinafter Story). Simply put, "[n]o state can say, that it has reserved, what it never possessed." Ibid.
III*
To be persuasive, petitioner's argument that Article VIII is a valid exercise of the State's reserved power to give binding instructions to its representatives would have to overcome three hurdles. First, the historical precedents on
*Justice Souter does not join this Part of the Court's opinion.
519
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