The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, a part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791. See more. Tenth Amendment: In this 1789 draft of the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution appears as Article the Twelfth, reserving to the states or to the people powers not delegated to the federal government. There are good reasons for focusing Tenth Amendment concern on federal coercion of a State's enactment of legislation or regulations or creation of an administrative program. The 10th Amendment is the last entry in the Bill of Rights, which was created in order to restrict the range of governmental power and to preserve individual liberty.
These activities are inherently central acts of a sovereign; if an area of state activity is to be protected from direct coercion by an implication drawn from the Tenth Amendment, legislating and regulating are prime candidates. It expresses the principle of federalism, also known as states' rights by stating that the federal government has only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution, and that all other powers not forbidden to the states by the Constitution, are reserved to each state, or its people. Tenth amendment definition, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing to the states and the people those rights that are not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. Though there were a total of 12 original amendments approved by the Senate, two of them weren’t ratified by the states.