Chrisholm v. Georgia prompted the creation of the Eleventh Amendment specifically to patch that part of the law to strengthen the states, so that's hardly a goo

Chrisholm v. Georgia prompted the creation of the Eleventh Amendment specifically to patch that part of the law to strengthen the states, so that's hardly a good example of a building consensus of federal powers. Ware v. Hylton is a straightforward application of the enumerated powers. Martin vs. Hunter's Lessee is likewise straightforward—it would be meaningless to have a federal law if each state could interpret it differently. While McCulloch v. Maryland has been used to dramatically extend the powers of the federal government it's not clear that this was the intention at the time. The scope at the time was that the delegation of a specific power to the Federal government implied the delegation of the means to execute that power, which is not the same thing as assigning all powers to the Federal government by default. While we're citing random Supreme Court cases to try to get a sense for the legal situation in the 1800s, here are some you glossed over: * Barron v. Baltimore (1833) held that the Bill of Rights could not bind State governments. * Cooley v. Board of Warrens (1852) held that States can regular interstate commerce as long as they don't conflict with acts of Congress. * Pollock v. Farmer's Loan & Trust Co. (1895) held that unapportioned income tax was unconstitutional. This had to be fixed with an amendment. > The idea that the 10th Amendment actually granted the states any powers was a fiction first employed by the Southern states to try to secede from the Union, and resurrected a century later by the Federalist Society. If this were true then I would be 100% sympathetic to the Southern states who felt they'd had a bait and switch pulled on them. But it's pretty obvious from the primary sources all the way through the civil war that this is not how it was perceived. That said, it's obvious that you have your history and you won't be separated from it, so I'm going to check out here.