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.”
The mission of the Tenth Amendment Project is dedicated to the notion that the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was enacted to expressly limit the powers delineated to the federal government and to reserve the rest to state governments, who understand the needs of their constituencies best. The Tenth Amendment Project works to halt the ever expanding size and scope of the administrative state, to highlight and support state endeavors to serve as laboratories of experimentation for policies that work, and to preserving the constitutional structure of government our founders intended.
Principles
Executive and Federal Legislative Actions should be limited to those actions where the United States Constitution has clearly and specifically delegated authority
Congress should not preempt state laws unless there are compelling national problems
Congress should not interfere with the ability of states to serve as laboratories of experimentation to implement policies that best fit their own local needs.
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
– James Madison, The Federalist No. 45
"What is absolutely clear, affirmed by the text of the 1789 Constitution, by the Tenth Amendment ratified in 1791, and by innumerable cases of ours in the 220 years since, is that there are structural limits upon federal power—upon what it can prescribe with respect to private conduct, and upon what it can impose upon the sovereign States. Whatever may be the conceptual limits upon the Commerce Clause and upon the power to tax and spend, they cannot be such as will enable the Federal Government to regulate all private conduct and to compel the States to function as administrators of federal programs.
That clear principle carries the day here."
– Justice Antonin Scalia
“Today neither of our two parties maintains a meaningful commitment to the principle of States' Rights. The Tenth Amendment is not a 'general assumption' but a rule of law. States rights mean that states have a right to act or not to act, as they see fit, in areas reserved to them.”
– Senator Barry Goldwater
