My understanding is that since the Civil War the interpretation of the 10th Amendment is that states retain powers not because they are independent states participating with the federal government, but are explicitly subject to federal authority and maintain their powers only insofar as the constitution protects them and the federal government doesn’t move to take them by rule of law. Prior to the end of the Civil War it seems to have generally been held that states were independently associated with the United States and could leave, and we fought a war to assert that they could not. This makes it clear that any powers they have are because the federal government lets them have them rather than the other way around.
Well, given that the text of the US constitution seems to clearly state that all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the states (or the people), I don’t see how “power is devolved to the states from the federal government”. It seems that the states don’t need to wait for the federal government to “devolve” power to them in order to do something. As indeed we saw recently with respect to covid policy.
You could argue that the federal government “lets” the states do this, in the sense that the federal government has more guns than the states, and hence could stop them it it wanted to. But this would be naive. These guns are operated by people, whose loyalty to the federal government if there were a conflict would not be automatic.
Your textual interpretation of the constitution may be the right one, but it is not the one that governs as law in the US. Supreme Court has been very clear for the past 100+ years that the 10th amendment means literally nothing.
My understanding is that since the Civil War the interpretation of the 10th Amendment is that states retain powers not because they are independent states participating with the federal government, but are explicitly subject to federal authority and maintain their powers only insofar as the constitution protects them and the federal government doesn’t move to take them by rule of law. Prior to the end of the Civil War it seems to have generally been held that states were independently associated with the United States and could leave, and we fought a war to assert that they could not. This makes it clear that any powers they have are because the federal government lets them have them rather than the other way around.
Well, given that the text of the US constitution seems to clearly state that all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the states (or the people), I don’t see how “power is devolved to the states from the federal government”. It seems that the states don’t need to wait for the federal government to “devolve” power to them in order to do something. As indeed we saw recently with respect to covid policy.
You could argue that the federal government “lets” the states do this, in the sense that the federal government has more guns than the states, and hence could stop them it it wanted to. But this would be naive. These guns are operated by people, whose loyalty to the federal government if there were a conflict would not be automatic.
Your textual interpretation of the constitution may be the right one, but it is not the one that governs as law in the US. Supreme Court has been very clear for the past 100+ years that the 10th amendment means literally nothing.