Tenther movement information

The Tenther movement is a social movement in the United States, whose adherents espouse the political ideology that the federal government's enumerated powers must be read very narrowly to exclude much of what the federal government already does, citing the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in support of this.^[1] The text of the amendment reads:

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.^[2]

Despite the movement's assertions, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Tenth Amendment such that the Amendment does not require a narrow interpretation of the federal government's enumerated powers. Instead, the Court holds that the powers of the federal government derive from the states voluntarily surrendering part of their sovereign powers. This view was reiterated in United States v. Darby Lumber in which the Court stated that the Tenth Amendment "states but a truism that all [powers of the State Sovereign] is retained which has not been surrendered [by ratification of the Constitution and membership in the United States]". In summary, members of the Tenther Movement believe that the Tenth Amendment should be interpreted as requiring that the federal government's enumerated powers be construed narrowly. In contrast, the Supreme Court interprets the Tenth Amendment as a default rule. In the absence of enumerated federal power, each state is the supreme sovereign of its own territory, but that this rule has no bearing on interpreting the scope of an enumerated federal power (e.g. the power to make uniform bankruptcy law).