The 10th Amendment: The Foundation of the Constitution
AT A GLANCE
• The government’s role is to protect natural rights, not to rule over citizens. Ultimate earthly authority rests with the people.
• The Constitution was designed to limit federal power and safeguard individual liberty by granting only specific, delegated powers.
• Ratification of the Constitution depended on promises to add amendments to clarify the limits on the federal government.
• The 10th Amendment reinforces that all powers not given to the federal government remain with the states or the people.
In 1766, the British Parliament made a fatal mistake: Through the Declaratory Act, it claimed power to legislate for the American Colonies“in all cases whatsoever.” That assertion of unlimited, centralized power taught both the British Empire and America’s Founders timeless lessons that would shape the foundation of the U.S. Constitution.
This wasn’t abstract political theory. The Colonists understood the real fight wasn’t over stamps, standing armies, taxation, or tea. Those were, as John Hancock explained, mere symptoms of the deadly disease, examples of how the British “exercised this pretended right” of unlimited power.
James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” later said this clash over the limits of power was about “the fundamental principle on which our independence itself was declared.”
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