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Page Number: 31.0

10 

CHIAFALO v. WASHINGTON 

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment 

“The Federal Government and the States thus face differ-
ent default rules: Where the Constitution is silent about the 
exercise  of  a  particular  power[,]  the  Federal  Government
lacks that power and the States enjoy it.”  Id., at 848; see 
also  United  States  v.  Comstock,  560  U. S.  126,  159  (2010) 
(THOMAS, J., dissenting). 

This  allocation  of  power  is  apparent  in  the  structure  of 
our  Constitution.  The  Federal  Government  “is  acknowl-
edged by all to be one of enumerated powers.”  McCulloch 
v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 405 (1819).  “[T]he powers del-
egated  by  the  . . .  Constitution  to  the  federal  government
are few and defined,” while those that belong to the States 
“remain . . . numerous and indefinite.”  The Federalist No. 
45, p. 292 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (J. Madison).  Article I, for 
example, enumerates various legislative powers in §8, but 
it specifically limits Congress’ authority to the “legislative 
Powers herein granted,” §1.  States face no such constraint 
because the Constitution does not delineate the powers of 
the  States.  Article  I,  §10,  contains  a  brief  list  of  powers
removed from the States, but States are otherwise “free to 
exercise  all  powers  that  the  Constitution  does  not 
withhold from them.”  Comstock, supra, at 159 (THOMAS, J., 
dissenting).

This  structural  principle  is  explicitly  enshrined  in  the 
Tenth  Amendment.  That  Amendment  states  that  “[t]he
powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitu-
tion, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people.”  As Justice Story ex-
plained, “[t]his amendment is a mere affirmation of what,
upon any just reasoning, is a necessary rule of interpreting
the constitution.  Being an instrument of limited and enu-
merated powers, it follows irresistibly, that what is not con-
ferred, is withheld, and belongs to the state authorities.”  3 
J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United 
States  §1900,  p.  752  (1833);  see  also  Alden  v.  Maine,  527 
U. S. 706, 714 (1999); New York v. United States, 505 U. S.