States' Rights and the Federal Polity: An Overview
by Ryan Setliff

States' Rights are ostensibly guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people." Jurist Marshall DeRosa observes:

States' rights were antecedent to the national governments under the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. The origins of states' rights can be traced to colonial America, during which time townships, counties, and colonial assemblies had increasingly asserted their respective desires for local self-government and indepedence from British control.¹

1. DeRosa, Marshall, “States' Rights,” American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. Nelson, eds., (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), p. 812

State Sovereignty and Reserved Rights

The nature of State sovereignty from the impetus of the Union

“That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.” –The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.