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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
that the powers exercised by Congress were given or delegated to Congress by the people in the States. Those powers not delegated were reserved to the States or the people.
Article II further provided, however, that Congress was limited to
those powers ‘‘expressly’’ delegated by the States. The intended effect of
this wording was to prevent Congress from usurping the reserved powers of the States by claiming that it possessed not only delegated powers,
but also certain additional powers that might be implied from those specifically granted. Significantly, no explicit references to State sovereignty
were included in the Constitution of 1787. The word ‘‘expressly’’ was
also omitted from the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which stated
simply that, ‘‘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.’’
Underscoring the principle of State sovereignty, Article III described
the confederacy formed under the Articles of Confederation as a ‘‘league
of friendship.’’ In essence, therefore, the Articles were ostensibly little
more than a treaty among sovereign republics, comparable in this century to the League of Nations or its successor, the United Nations. The
‘‘league’’ was declared to be ‘‘perpetual,’’ and like an international agreement, the Articles contained various provisions for mutual friendship
and cooperation among the signatories.
Under traditional principles of international law and comity, for example, it is a common practice for one country to grant certain basic civil
rights and privileges to foreigners traveling or residing within its borders
that it grants to its own citizens. An American citizen visiting Italy, let us
say, or almost any civilized nation of the free world, will find the same
degree of protection to his person or property as is enjoyed by the citizens of those nations. He may, to cite just one example, file a lawsuit in
the courts of a foreign country in order to assert a certain right. In recognition of this principle, Article IV of the Articles of Confederation provided that the ‘‘free inhabitants’’ of one State sojourning in another State
were ‘‘entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States,’’ to ‘‘free ingress and egress to and from any other State,’’ and
to ‘‘all the privileges of trade and commerce.’’
Article IV also provided for the extradition (surrender) of fugitives