The 10th and 14th Amendments' role in police search powers

Amendment

Police Power and the U.S. Constitution

The United States Constitution is the highest body of law in the land; it establishes the workings of the federal government and the organization of the various semi-independent states that make up the nation. Ratified in 1789, the basic set-up of the United States government has remained largely unchanged for over two hundred years. This does not mean, however, that everything was settled by the authors of the Constitution, or that there has been no change in the way the federal government operates or the ways in which the various states interact. On the contrary, the Constitution was purposefully designed to be able to adapt and evolve as the needs and values of American society changed. This "living Constitution," as it has been described by many scholars, has allowed for vastly different interpretations over the centuries of this nation's existence. In addition, the Constitution has provisions that explicitly provide for the ability to legislate direct and absolute change to the document/body of law itself, allowing for an even more diverse historical pattern of legal evolution.

The method by which the Constitution can be changed is known as the amendment process. This process is relatively straightforward: an amendment is proposed in Congress, and if it passes both houses by a two-thirds vote, it is sent to the various states. If three fourths of the states -- through either their own legislative bodies or through special conventions -- pass the amendment, it becomes a part of the U.S. Constitution. But as straightforward as this process is, it is not easy to do -- only twenty-seven amendments have added to the Constitution in this nation's history, out of the over ten-thousand that have been proposed (Source Watch 2006). This makes amendments to the Constitution quite powerful, as it takes an amendment to reverse an amendment (which is exactly what happened with prohibition and its repeal).

The first ten amendments, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, were passed almost immediately after they were proposed (during the Constitutional Convention), but their interpretation has continued to be a matter of debate (Source Watch 2006). The Tenth Amendments itself is unusually controversial, with its interpretation capable of having profound effects on the powers of the federal and state governments. The text of the amendment is fairly simple, reading: "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" (Tenth Amendment Center). Generally, this amendment has been considered a needless truism, simply restating the general principle of the Constitution that the federal government has the powers enumerated therein, and that the states can do anything not disallowed by the Constitution.

Other interpretations of the amendment are more strict, suggesting that the federal government should not have any powers not expressly provided to it by the Constitution, and that the states should have absolute rights in these areas (Tenth Amendment Center). Regardless of the theoretical interpretation of this amendment, the practical effects thus far have been quite clear -- responsibilities and rights not handled by the federal government are left up to state and local governments. One of the most important areas in which this can be seen in action is through the investigation of crime. Because the federal government does not prohibit any state or locality's rights in searching a person or their property for evidence of a crime (other than the provisions of the fourth amendment), local police have the authority granted to them by their own state and/or local governments to search -- it is a right held in reserve by the people.

This does not mean that local police (or federal agents, for that matter) have full reign in searching for evidence. Various matters of police abuse have been raised and debated over the centuries, but among the most profound was the legalized racism that many state and local laws allowed their police forces to practice. Based on federal laws, citizenship was not always a rigidly defined concept, and this allowed certain states and localities (specifically those in the South leading up to and following the Civil War) to deny certain protections and rights to individuals. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the close of the Civil War, addresses this issue: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" (FindLaw 2009). This quite clearly limits states' rights in many matters.