What are reserved powers? Learn about reserved power definition, clause and amendment along with reserved powers examples.
Updated: 11/21/2023
Reserved Powers | Definition, History & Examples
Table of Contents
- What are Reserved Powers?
- Reserved Powers Examples
- Reserved Powers History
- Disputes Between State and Federal
- Lesson Summary
- FAQs
- Activities
Prompts About Reserved Powers:
Study Prompt:
Make a set of flashcards that provides the definitions of the bolded terms from the lesson (reserved powers, federal system, national government, enumerated powers, 10th Amendment, concurrent powers).
Example: A federal system has two or more levels of government.
Essay Prompt 1:
Write an essay of approximately one to two pages that defines reserved powers and describes why the Framers of the Constitution decided to add the concept of reserved powers to the Constitution via the 10th Amendment. Be sure that your essay discusses some of the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation to illustrate how the Framers arrived at the conclusion to implement the concept of reserved powers.
Example: Since the states had too much power under the Articles of Confederation, the Framers had to figure out a way to balance state power with adequate federal power.
Essay Prompt 2:
In approximately three paragraphs, write an essay that explains concurrent powers in federalism.
Example: State and federal powers can sometimes intermingle in concurrent powers.
List Prompt:
Make a list of at least ten types of powers in a federal system. Note in parentheses next to each power whether it is a concurrent, reserved, or enumerated power. You can refer to the graphic organizer presented in the lesson, but try to recall as many from memory as you can.
Example: Issue licenses (reserved power).
Graphic Organizer Prompt:
Create a chart, poster, or some other type of graphic organizer that illustrates a spectrum of what can happen when there are disputes between states and the federal government over powers.
Example: At the far end of the spectrum, you could have secession.
What are reserved powers of government?
The reserved powers of government are the powers that are reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Any powers not given to the national government are reserved to the states.
What are the five examples of reserved powers?
Reserved powers are laws that are not specifically given to the national government and are reserved to the states. Five examples of reserved powers are regulating intrastate trade and commerce (businesses within a state), creating public schools, issuing professional licenses, establishing local governments, and passing voting laws.
What do reserved powers mean?
Reserved powers are those that are not specifically granted to the national government in the Constitution and are therefore reserved to the states. This avoids giving too much power to one level of government.
Table of Contents
- What are Reserved Powers?
- Reserved Powers Examples
- Reserved Powers History
- Disputes Between State and Federal
- Lesson Summary
Reserved powers are laws that are not specifically given to the national government and are reserved for the states. The state governments hold these powers under the Tenth Amendment, the last amendment in the Bill of Rights. Rather than having a national government with all the power, which could lead to tyranny, the Tenth Amendment ensures that some powers are protected for the states.
Reserved Powers Definition
When writing the Constitution, the Founders wanted to avoid granting too much power to one level of government, so they created a federal system, also known as federalism. Under federalism, power is divided and shared between the national and state governments. While the Supremacy Clause in Article 6 of the Constitution says that the Constitution and federal laws "shall be the supreme law of the land," the Tenth Amendment protects the states by saying any powers not assigned to the national government are reserved for the states. The Constitution does not explicitly list the powers of the states, and instead, it focuses on the powers of the national government. The enumerated powers, also called delegated or expressed powers, are explicitly mentioned in the Constitution as going to the national government. For example, Congress has the power to declare war and coin money.
While some powers are enumerated for the national government and others are reserved for the states, there is some overlap. Powers that both the national and state governments exercise are concurrent powers, and they include the powers to tax, borrow money, and create court systems. This is why people must pay federal and state taxes or undergo legal proceedings in a federal or state court, depending on the nature of their case. The system of federalism means the levels of government can maintain some independence yet still work together to solve problems.
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While the Constitution does not mention states' powers, it does prohibit the states from doing certain things. For example, Article 1, Section 10 says the states are barred from making their own treaties, coining money, and granting titles of nobility. During the ratification of the Constitution, such language contributed to the states' fears that the Constitution was taking away too much of their powers. The Tenth Amendment was added to the Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights to assure the states that they would retain their authority.
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Reserved powers definition often deals with laws that allow states to regulate the health, safety, and welfare of their population. Some reserved powers examples include issuing driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and professional licenses, creating public schools, and establishing voting and election procedures.
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The United States did not always have a federal system. Its first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, assigned most powers to the states and established a structure of government called a confederation. This was a reaction to the fear of creating a government that would replicate the tyranny experienced under the British monarchy. Rather than concentrating too much power in a national government, the Founders wanted to preserve state sovereignty with the understanding that the states would be better able to know and safeguard the rights of the people. Under the Articles, the states had the powers to collect taxes, regulate interstate trade and commerce, and raise troops (state militias). The national government was very weak and had few powers like declaring war and making treaties with other nations. The structure of the Articles was intended to prevent abuses of power by a strong national government. However, putting so much power with the states created a system that was incapable of resolving significant problems like the growing debt. These flaws with the Articles of Confederation were highlighted in the event of Shays' Rebellion, an insurrection in Massachusetts over the high taxes collected by the state. The national government was incapable of helping the state put down the rebellion, showing a need for a stronger national government that could provide domestic order and support the states.
In 1787, the Founders created a new Constitution that moved the young nation away from a confederation during the Constitutional Convention. Instead, they established a federal system where power would be divided between a stronger national government and the individual states. Each entity would have its powers, while some would be shared.
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However, after the Constitution was written, there was not an immediate wave of support for the new government, and two groups emerged to support or oppose the Constitution. The Federalists were the ones who wanted to ratify the Constitution and believed that the government it created would lead to more order and economic growth. The Antifederalists, however, still considered the individual states would be better at preserving the rights of the people and had doubts about a stronger national government.
In defending the Constitution, James Madison said in Federalist Paper #45, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." Madison argued that the Constitution created a national government with clearly defined powers that would not violate state sovereignty. The Antifederalists did not trust the national government to stay limited, so they still advocated that a list of rights and liberties, called a Bill of Rights, be added to the Constitution to protect the people and the states from being oppressed by the national government.
James Madison wrote the amendments that would become the Bill of Rights, including the Tenth Amendment that helped calm fears around the new Constitution and affirm the states would maintain their power.
Reserved Powers Clause
The Tenth Amendment says that "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." Any powers not enumerated or granted explicitly to the national government in the Constitution are reserved to the states. The Founders could not list every power that the government could need, so this clause provides leeway for the government to handle new problems. For example, cars were not around when the Constitution was written, so the power to grant drivers licenses was not included. Once the need for driver's licenses emerged, this power was given to the states since it is not stated in the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment is crucial to establishing federalism by guaranteeing that not all powers rest in one part of the government and that state powers are protected.
The Tenth Amendment is vague and does not specify what powers should go to the states. It can lead to confusion over which level of government has certain powers-the national government or the states?
Powers Reserved to the States
Since neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights lists the powers reserved to the states, it can be challenging to know what the states can exactly do. States are responsible for:
- Establishing public schools
- Creating local governments (counties, townships, etc.)
- Establishing police and fire departments/public safety
- Instituting voting laws and election procedures
- Regulating businesses within a state (intrastate commerce)
- Passing marriage and divorce laws
- Granting drivers licenses
- Issuing professional licenses
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Since the Tenth Amendment does not list or provide examples of what exactly should be under the states' authority, it can be hard to know whether power lies with the national or state governments. If there is a conflict between national and state laws, the Supreme Court acts as the "umpire" to settle these disputes. The Supreme Court is responsible for interpreting the Constitution and determining what is constitutional, so they decide cases that raise questions over national versus state powers.
An example is in the Supreme Court case Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), where the Court upheld Congress' sole power to regulate interstate commerce, and so states could not issue their own licenses for interstate shipping routes. While there have been times when the Court has expanded national power, they have also sided with the states. In U.S. v. Lopez (1995), the Court ruled the Gun-Free School Zones Act passed by Congress in 1990 was unconstitutional. While Congress claimed the power to pass this law was part of its authority to control interstate commerce, the Court said that regulating firearms around schools did not involve commerce, so it should be left to the states.
Usually, these questions are settled peacefully through court decisions. However, one stark example of a national-state-level dispute that became violent was the Civil War. The Southern states wanted to maintain slavery, believing it was something that should be decided by the individual states rather than the federal government. The conflict turned into war as the Southern states attempted to leave the Union. But, when the Union won, and the secession of the states failed, the supremacy of the national government was settled.
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The reserved powers of the states are protected by the Tenth Amendment which says any power not explicitly given to the national government is secured to the state or the people. Examples of reserved powers include passing marriage and divorce laws, granting driver's licenses, issuing professional licenses, and creating public schools. Reserved powers are essential in maintaining federalism, especially when the national and state governments share it. Rather than keeping the structure of the Articles of Confederation, where the state had all the authority, the Constitution's system of federalism provides a proper balance of power. Along with the reserved powers of the states, the enumerated powers are powers that are explicitly given to the national government, such as declaring war. Meanwhile, concurrent powers are those that the national and state governments share, such as the power to tax. If there is any conflict between the national and state governments, the Supreme Court ultimately settles these disputes and upholds the system designed in the Constitution.
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Video Transcript
Reserved Powers: The Safety Valve of the U.S. Constitution
Any community, at its most basic level, is a government--a shared agreement by the members of that community (whether it's a family, or a group of friends, or an entire nation), to live according to a certain set of rules. This is helpful to keep in mind, since forming a government isn't really as unusual as it sounds. One of the toughest questions facing the formation of any government is not so much what it can do--most of that, we can agree on--but what it can't do.
And--even more importantly in a system like the United States--who's going to do it?
In our system, the Founding Fathers in 1787 came up with a nifty, albeit not entirely perfect, mechanism in the Constitution. It's called the reserved powers clause. It's actually not part of the main body of the document. It's the 10th Amendment, and put simply, it says whatever is not explicitly stated as a responsibility of the federal government, is under control of the states.
But why do we need such a mechanism? And how did it develop? And what's it doing now?
Writing a Constitution
In 1787, when the Framers of the Constitution got together in Philadelphia to revise the original national government (Articles of Confederation), there were a couple of things they all agreed on. Probably the most important of these was the fact that we were going to have a federal republic. The last word, 'republic,' simply meant that we were going to have a system of democratic representation, in which voters and states would have someone standing for them in a national assembly. What we would end up calling Congress. The first part, 'federal' - well, that's a teensy bit more complex.
A federal system is one that has at least two different levels of government. In our system, there is a national government, often called the 'central' or 'federal' government, further complicating things, and fifty state governments. At the time of the Constitution's writing, there were only thirteen states; but it was clear to the Founding Fathers, no matter what they thought of the states (and some were clearly in favor of just doing away with them altogether), the states weren't going anywhere. This was especially so in an era when most people were born, lived, and died within thirty miles of the same place--their loyalties weren't to some ambiguous nation like 'America,' but to their home states.
This was a problem for the Framers, since one of the main gripes about the Articles of Confederation was that the national government was too weak, and the states had too much power. So how could you build a central authority that could get stuff done, without so weakening the states that people grew alarmed over the threat of tyranny? Maybe even more than that, they had another, similar question: what will the national government do, and what will the states do? What responsibilities will each have…and how will we know?
The simple answer here would be to just list the powers you wanted each level of government to have. And the Framers did that, for a while--the enumerated powers, the powers federal government, were listed in the various Articles of the document. For instance, Article 1, Section 8 spells out the powers of Congress, like its ability to collect taxes or declare war; and Article 2 lists the powers of the President, like granting pardons or vetoing legislation.
The problem comes up when you realize that you can't really list every power, since you're not a mind-reader and you don't have a crystal ball. You don't know what the world's going to look like in fifty years, or a hundred. And if you want this government of yours to last beyond next weekend, you're going to have to design it well, which means not stretching it out to 65 pages worth of powers, especially when you can't possibly cover everything.
Take, for instance, the issue of drivers' licenses. Whose job is that? Of course, we couldn't have expected the Founding Fathers to assign a power over a device that didn't exist in the 18th century. So how do we decide which level of government will handle that?
The 10th Amendment
The answer is found in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1789, and introduced by James Madison - who wasn't originally a fan of amending the Constitution at all, but saw the need in order to appease critics of the document's design. The main gripe of these critics was that, by itself, the Constitution created a very powerful and assertive central authority, the sort of thing we just got done rebelling against, in the form of Great Britain. The 10th Amendment says, simply, that '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.'
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What this means is pretty striking: anything not described specifically in the Constitution ('delegated') as a power or obligation of the national government is, by definition, a power of the states. The Framers knew that state governments were closer to the 'people' than the central government could ever be (even today, with cell phones and the Internet), and therefore they wanted to create a sort of safety valve, which would keep the central government from growing too large. The reserved powers clause, represented in the 10th Amendment, is that safety valve. Any power not given to Washington, DC, automatically belongs to the states.
So try it out: drivers' licenses. Not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution? State power. What about education? Not in the Constitution? State power. See how it works?
Overlapping Powers
Of course, there is a U.S. Department of Education…how can there be a federal entity controlling educational policy if that power is reserved to the states?
Because in reality, federalism has a lot of overlap. Since the Constitution also empowers the federal government to 'promote the general welfare,' many Americans interpret education as part of that obligation. The powers shared by both levels of government are called concurrent powers, and they include things like the levying of taxes, since both state and federal authorities can do that, and defining crimes and punishments, since you could, theoretically, be charged with a crime in both a state and federal court. The elegance of the reserved powers clause is that it is a mechanism of government, not a list of powers that could never be complete or detailed enough for the real world.
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Disputes Between State and Federal
But what if there's a dispute between the rights of a state and the rights of the federal government? How does that get settled?
Generally, the U.S. Supreme Court exists for one overall reason--to determine whether or not acts of government are 'constitutional.' A major element of that is the issue of reserved powers; when has the federal government overreached and infringed on the rights of states?
Of course, in one spectacularly awful example of how federal arguments can get settled, a group of states once thought the federal government was infringing on their right to own, buy, and sell other human beings. They tried to leave the Union as a result; and the Civil War was the solution to that argument over reserved powers. But mostly, such questions regarding acts of government are settled peacefully.
Lesson Summary
One of the major issues in a federal system in which power is divided between two or more levels is determining which functions of government will be controlled at each level. The reserved powers clause of the U.S. Constitution, found in the 10th Amendment, established that any power not specifically delegated to the national government reverts to the states. This mechanism has created a process by which states control all functions of government not clearly delineated for the national government, and in which disputes are generally settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lesson Terminology
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- Federal System: two different levels of government
- National Government: consists of America's central government along with 50 state governments
- Reserved Powers: the 10th Amendment which states that whatever is not explicitly covered by the federal government is up to the states
- Enumerated Powers: the initial list of federal powers as mentioned in the Articles
- Concurrent Powers: shared powers by both levels of government (i.e. taxes, law and order)
Learning Outcomes
Knowing about reserved powers could enable you to achieve these objectives:
- Describe the reserved powers of the government
- Recognize the responsibilities of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution
- Define reserved powers using the 10th Amendment
- Discuss the overlapping powers
- Point out the role of the Supreme Court when federal and state governments disagree
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Reserved Powers | Definition, History & Examples
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