Powers Reserved for the People and the States: A History of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments

(Hardback)

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American judges and legal scholars have long misunderstood the intended meaning of the Ninth Amendment and its relationship to the Tenth. Because of misinterpretation, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments have not been used to fulfill their original purposes. The limited and unlimited powers of the federal government have been shaped greatly by that error. In this book the authors clarify the actual meaning of the Ninth Amendment and its connection to the Tenth Amendment in order to provide a clear understanding of the full potential of the two amendments. Historical and contemporary details are included to provide an appreciation of the intended purpose of the amendments.

Reviews

[M]cAffee, Bybee, and Bryant do a good job of shedding light on the history and development of the 9th and 10th amendments, and present the reader with a rich appreciation for the tangled relationship between state and federal governments in the US constitutional system. Sovereignty continues to be a contested issue (at least in political theory literature), particularly within federal arrangements; exploration of the 9th and 10th amendments gives flesh to that contest. * The Law and Politics Book Review *

Author Bio

Thomas B. McAffee is Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada/Las Vegas. He has taught law since 1982, initially at Southern Illinois University College of Law. He has published numerous articles on constitutional law, constitutional history, and constitutional theory, as well as the book, Inherent Rights, the Written Constitution, and Popular Sovereignty - The Founders Understanding (Greenwood, 2000). Jay S. Bybee is Judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He previously served in government as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, as Associate White House Counsel, and as an attorney at the Department of Justice. He was Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University. A. Christopher Bryant is Professor of Law, College of Law, University of Cincinnati. He clerked for Judge James L. Buckley of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. After his clerkship, he practiced law, first with the Washington, D.C. law firm Shea and Gardner and then as an Assistant in the United States Senate Office Legal Counsel. He also taught for three years at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.