Comments on: Minnesota Sovereignty Project http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/08/minnesota-sovereignty-project/ The Tenther Grapevine Fri, 24 May 2013 16:59:55 +0000 hourly 1 By: Michael Boldin http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/08/minnesota-sovereignty-project/#comment-113 Michael Boldin Sun, 09 Aug 2009 15:03:00 +0000 http://grassroots.tenthamendmentcenter.com/?p=197#comment-113 Michael – great perspective on this!

It is important to note that in the American system, sovereignty is final authority. And that authority is with the People. Governments, whether state or federal, are never sovereign. They only have powers – powers that are delegated to them by the sovereign people.

Some reading on our main site on this – “It’s the People’s Right” – and “The Original Meaning of an Omission“

]]> By: Michael Follon http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/08/minnesota-sovereignty-project/#comment-112 Michael Follon Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:03:33 +0000 http://grassroots.tenthamendmentcenter.com/?p=197#comment-112 Interpretation of the Tenth Amendment as specifying state sovereignty presumes that there are three levels of sovereignty – Federal, State and People – when in fact there is ONLY one. The wording -

‘are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’

is misleading and can lead to a misinterpretation. What I believe it to mean is that where the people of a specific part of the United States have formed a state government then the powers that have been delegated to it by the Constitution of the United States may be exercised on BEHALF of the sovereign people but when no state government exists they are they are exercisable directly by the sovereign people who are the source of all power.

‘I consider the people of the United States as forming one great community; and I consider the people of the different states as forming communities, again, on a lesser scale. From this great division of the people into distinct communities, it will be found necessary that different proportions of legislative powers should be given to the governments according to the nature, number, and magnitude of their objects.

Unless the people are considered in these two views, we shall never be able to understand the principle on which the system was constructed. I view the states as made FOR the people, as well as by them, and not the people as made for the states; the people, therefore, have a right, whilst enjoying the undeniable powers of society, to form either a general government, or state governments, in what manner they please, or to accommodate them to one another, and by this means preserve them all.’

SOURCE: ‘Collected Works of James Wilson’, edited by Kermit L. Hall and Mark David Hall, Volume I, ‘Remarks in Pennsylvania Ratification Convention’, page 214.

Blog Post – ‘James Wilson – ‘We the People’ and Sovereignty’ http://follonblogs.blogspot.com/.

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