Comment by ricree
7 years ago
Because the 10th provides little that is particularly concrete, and because the prevailing interpretation of other clauses has been fairly broad. That is to say, by and large the federal government has been acting withing the powers granted by the constitution, but at the moment those powers are held to be quite broad. Interstate commerce clause, in particular, means that the government can do quite a bit to regulate, so long as it is in some manner related to interstate trade. I don't personally agree with these interpretations, but they are the prevailing ones.
Likewise, incorporation doctrine is derived from the constitution. So anything that is considered barred by incorporation is therefore "prohibited by it[the constitution] to the States".
It has, in the past, been called "a truism" by the courts, and that's not a totally unreasonable read. Still, there issue has come up in court from time to time, and the wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_... ) lists some examples.
Interstate commerce has been interpreted very broadly... So broadly that consuming things you grew yourself is under subject of interstate commerce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
Even before that, there was a case where the federal government had limited the amount of wheat a farm could grow (to control prices), and came after a farmer who exceeded those limits for the sake of feeding his own livestock. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the earliest supreme court case where purely personal use counted as "interstate commerce".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
Wickard's use was not purely personal. He grew more wheat than he used, and he sold that excess on the interstate market (or, from a different viewpoint: he sold wheat up to the allowable limit and gave the rest to his livestock). This directly impacted the interstate commerce of wheat, because growing his own wheat meant there was less demand for wheat from other farmers. Scaled up to an entire nation, this would have rendered the wheat control law toothless. Generally, this law has been upheld consistently in this context, though SCOTUS has struck down cases where a good was tangentially related to Congress but the targeted act/good was not actually a commercial transaction (or the avoidance of a commercial transaction, as in Wickard).
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