Amendment X

"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."

Historically, the Framers of the Constitution wanted to create a country in which the federal government did not have the same power and ability to abuse American citizens the way that King George had abused them. Fearing the power of the federal government, the Framers insisted that all rights now specifically states within these first ten amendments were automatically assumed to be States rights; which gave states the power to decide and hold influence over their own citizens. This also helped to create a sort of system of checks and balances in the states, as one state could not use their powers to become more powerful than another as they both operated on the same level.

As the tenth amendment grants the remaining power of the government to the state government instead of the federal, it effectively allows states to claim that they have enumerated rights similar to those given to citizens by the ninth amendment. The image represents how the states claim the remaining power of the Constitution.

This cartoon illustrates how the federal government is not more powerful than the states, as the states had been granted far more power than the federal government through the tenth amendment.