Bond v US articles List

In the case of Carol Ann Bond sentenced to six years in prison for spreading toxic chemicals on her husband’s mistress’s car, mailbox and door knob. The issue is whether an individual can challenge a federal law on 10th amendment grounds; which concerns congressional verses State authority.

Full Case Name: Carol Anne Bond, Petitioner v. United States. Docket nos. 09-1227 ... 2009); certiorari granted, 562 U. S. ___ (2010)

The husband of Carol A. Bond of Lansdale, Pennsylvania impregnated Myrlinda Haynes and Bond told Haynes "I am going to make your life a living hell." Federal postal inspectors videotaped Bond stealing mail and putting poison in the muffler of Haynes's car. Bond was indicted for stealing mail and for violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention 1993.

Her appeal argued that applying the chemical weapons treaty to her violated the Tenth Amendment. The Court of Appeals found Bond lacked standing to make a Tenth Amendment claim.

The 10th Amendment of The united States

“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.”

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Bond v. United States. The issue in the case was whether a defendant may challenge the constitutionality of a federal criminal statute on 10th Amendment grounds, with plaintiffs arguing that Congress exceeded its constitutional powers in attempting to regulate something the Constitution leaves to the states.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court found that Bond had standing and that federal enforcement of the Chemical Weapons Convention in this instance intruded upon areas of police power reserved to the states. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that "By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power".

As I read this case, I find excerpts on almost every page that strike me as mind-boggling, explosive and even revolutionary. I can’t recall reading any other case in the past 12 years that filled me with such excitement and hope.

In short, freedom advocates like us just got a green light from the United States Supreme Court to bring more cases under the 10th Amendment. This will have huge—positive—implications for freedom so long as the current constitution of the court holds.

I see this decision as so extraordinary, that I can’t imagine how the Supreme Court (in a 9 to 0 decision), would dare write this opinion without fearing for their lives.

Bond, on Tenth Amendment grounds, contended that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to enact the statute. While the case was in the court of appeals, the government maintained that Bond did not have standing to challenge the statute on Tenth Amendment grounds. (The courts eventually changed its position and agreed that Bond did have standing to challenge the federal law on Tenth Amendment grounds.) The question that the Supreme Court answered was "whether a person indicted for violating a federal statute has standing to challenge its validity on grounds that, by enacting it, Congress exceeded its powers under the Constitution, thus intruding upon the sovereignty and authority of the States."