The Supreme Court, by a search for references in a complete database
of its decisions, has mentioned the 10th Amendment in 209 cases.
Arguably, this means that the Supreme Court has "upheld" the Tenth
Amendment in those cases, as by definition its holdings (whether
affirming or reversing a lower court's decision) are consistent with
the 10th Amendment. That's also a tautology - "As the Supreme Court is
the final arbiter of Constitutional issues, its decisions are always
consistent with the Constitution".)
If you are asking how often they favor state rights over federal
power, or vice versa, that can best be analyzed by actually reading
all 209 cases. Ouch. There are research tools which can short-cut that
process. For example, FindLaw presents an annotated Constitution, with
its Tenth Amendment annotations presented at:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment10/
That document may help you find the information you need. You should
also be able to look up all 209 Supreme Court decisions on FindLaw
(although they may first require free registration).
If you live near a University with a law school, you may wish to stop
by a campus bookstore and look in the legal section. There are single
volume treatises on Constitutional law issues which may answer your
question, and which may present an analysis of the various competing
theories of how the Tenth Amendment should be interpreted and applied.
The treatise by Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law School is considered to
be perhaps the best single volume constitutional law treatise,
although it does have a political slant toward the left.
I hope this helps. |
