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But doesn't the constitution designate more functions for the US government than that one? Aren't the functions of our government stated in the Preamble of the Constitution, which reads
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
No. The preamble is a mission statement of sorts. The Supreme Court has referred to the preamble as "evidence of the origin, scope and purpose" of the Constitution in its entirety (Bill of Rights included), but it carries no legal weight.
From Joseph Story's Commentaries:
§ 462. And, here, we must guard ourselves against an error, which is too often allowed to creep into the discussions upon this subject. The preamble never can be resorted to, to enlarge the powers confided to the general government, or any of its departments. It cannot confer any power per se; it can never amount, by implication, to an enlargement of any power expressly given. It can never be the legitimate source of any implied power, when otherwise withdrawn from the constitution. Its true office is to expound the nature, and extent, and application ofthe powers actually conferred by the constitution, and not substantively to create them. For example, the preamble declares one object to be, " to provide for the common defence." No one can doubt, that this does not enlarge the powers of congress to pass any measures, which they may deem useful for the common defence.1 But suppose the terms of a given power admit of two constructions, the one more restrictive, the other more liberal, and each of them is consistent with the words, but is, and ought to be, governed by the intent of the power; if one would promote, and the other defeat the common defence, ought not the former, upon the soundest principles of interpretation to be adopted? Are we at liberty, upon any principles of reason, or common sense, to adopt a restrictive meaning, which will defeat an avowed object of the constitution, when another equally natural and more appropriate to the object is before us? Would not this be to destroy an instrument by a measure of its words, which that instrument itself repudiates?
Contrary to popular (uneducated) opinion, the Constitution is very specific in its description of -- and conferment of power to -- the federal government. And it is just as specific in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments where it recognizes that all powers not specifically given to the fed belong to the states and to the people, and forbids the fed from using the rights enumerated in the Constitution to "to deny or disparage others retained by the peopled".
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