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. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
II. Spending Clause, Commerce Clause and Tenth Amendment
Art. I Section 8.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts
and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and
general welfare of the United States;
The Congress shall have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.
Amendment X
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.
III. Bork on Temptation of the Judiciary:
The late, great Robert Bork once brilliantly explained how a judge can be tempted to follow his own views of justice rather than to do his duty and follow the law:
In law, the moment of temptation is the moment of choice, when a judge realizes that in the case before him his strogly held views of justice, his political and moral imperative, is not embodied in a statute or in any provision of the Constitution. He must then choose between his version of justice and abiding by the American form of government. Yet the desire to do justice, whose nature seems to him obvious, is compelling, while the concept of constitutional process is abstract, rather arid, and the abstinence it counsels unsatisfying. To give in to temptation, this one time, solves an urgent human problem, and a faint crack appears in the American foundation. A judge has begun to rule where a legislator should.
No comments:
Post a Comment