Cert. Grant in 10th Amendment Case
12th October 2010
The underlying issue is whether, pursuant to the Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by the Senate in 1997, Congress can criminalize any non-peacefu use of a toxic substance. Defendant argues that her particular use (to try to injure her husband’s mistress) was not within the reach of any enumerated congressional power.
A key issue in the case is this line from Tennessee Electric Power Corp. v. TVA (1939): that legal persons, “absent the states or their officers, have no standing in this suit to raise any question under the amendment.” Some lower courts have treated this as dicta but others have not.
This could be a huge step toward–or from–increasing the Constitutional constraints on Federal power. The question of standing is key: Do only the states have the ability to invoke the 10th Amendment? Or can individuals?