States’ rights and state sovereignty.

The states’ rights argument dates back to the founding of the United States and the first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation. The articles were drafted by delegates of the “states in Congress assembled” and explicitly provided for state sovereignty: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence.” The U.S. Constitution of 1789, however, makes no mention of sovereignty, implies popular sovereignty in the Preamble’s invocation of “We the people,” and explicitly declares national supremacy in Article VI: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme Law of the Land…, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” The first Congress in 1789 proposed what came to be the Tenth Amendment in order to pacify the antifederalists, the states’ rights advocates who opposed the Constitution of 1789. This amendment’s language still serves as the principal constitutional grounds for states’ rights arguments: “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.”