Editing Openai/695c860c-fb24-8010-a014-a687d2d61cb3 (section)

==== Madison’s phrasing in the House was that the amendments were: ====

: 

But declaratory of what?
Not of some free-floating natural law obligation binding all sovereigns equally. Rather:
'' Declaratory of the limited nature of ''federal* power
* Restrictive of misconstruction of federal grants

The redundancy Federalists complained about was this:

: 

That redundancy argument only makes sense with respect to the federal government, whose powers were enumerated.

It makes no sense as an argument about the states, whose police powers were:
* General
* Plenary
* Reserved
* Already constrained (or not) by their own constitutions

If the Bill of Rights were understood to bind states:
* The “redundant” objection would have been raised by the states
* State ratifying conventions would have treated the amendments as substantive alterations of state sovereignty

They did not.