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President Donald Trump's claim that he has 'total' and 'absolute' authority to end state stay-home orders is contradicted by a major Supreme Court case and legal precedents dating back to the 1700s.

Trump's unequivocal statement at Monday's White House press briefing drew a rebuke from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo along with legal scholars – setting up a potential constitutional clash if the White House tries to demand states lift a range of public safety measures. 

'We don't have a king in this country ... It's the colonies that seeded certain responsibility to a federal government. all other power remains with the states,' he said Tuesday.

Cuomo was paraphrasing the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which was incorporated into the Bill of Rights. It 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.'

President Donald Trump has claimed 'total' authority to end state stay-home orders – and has referenced precious medical equipment the federal government supplies in recent tweets

Powers that the Constitution did not specifically grant to Congress of the executive – like the power to declare war or to make treaties – were to remain with the states.

And the states themselves operated under traditions of British Common law dating back years before they enacted their own constitutions. It is on that bases that states have maintained sweeping 'police powers' dealing with health and safety – including to take steps to deal with an outbreak within their borders. 

At the time, locking people down for quarantine was hardly unusual; after the Revolutionary War yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia. 

It is for this reason that state governors and mayors issued orders for citizens to stay home amid the coronavirus outbreak. President Trump repeatedly deferred to those powers when questioned at earlier briefings about governors such as Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who resisted pressure to impose their own orders even after Trump put out his own federal 'guidelines' for people to stay at home and avoid large groups. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the president is not a 'king'

Said James Madison: 'If the power was not given, Congress could not exercise it'

The Signing of the Constitution of the United States, with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. James Madison wrote that Congress 'could not' execute powers not expressly granted to it

States derive their quarantine powers from British common law, as well as from the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which was included in the Bill of Rights

Southern states often invoked the 10th Amendment during the Jim Crow era. But it guards a number of state authorities in the American system, including police powers dealing with public health

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall used a ruling on interstate commerce in 1824 to make clear that 'police powers' were for the states alone. 

Quarantine laws 'form a portion of that immense mass of legislation which embraces everything within the territory of a State not surrendered to the General Government,' Marshal wrote in Gibbons v. Ogden, a landmark case dealing with interstate commerce

States have quarantine laws on their books. Many of them are between 40 and 100 years old, according to a 2014 Congressional Research Service report on the topic. 

The feds do have powers to prevent diseases from coming from overseas, and to quarantine individuals.  

'While the federal government has authority to authorize quarantine and isolation under certain circumstances, the primary authority for quarantine and isolation exists at the state level as an exercise of the state's police power,' according to the report, referenced in an analysis by the Constitution Center.

The report cites the Centers for Disease Control, noting: 'CDC acknowledges this deference to state authority as follows: In general, CDC defers to the state and local health authorities in their primary use of their own separate quarantine powers. Based upon long experience and collaborative working relationships with our state and local partners, CDC continues to anticipate the need to use this federal authority to quarantine an exposed person only in rare situations, such as events at ports of entry or in similar time-sensitive settings.'

Clashes over the role of state powers date to the days before the adoption of the Constitution and to the early days of the republic. They continued through the Civil War, when southern states invoked the 10th Amendment to claim the right to continue slavery – even as northern states invoked their own right not to be forced to enforce the federal Fugitive Slave Act – and the Civil Rights era. 

Alabama Gov. George Wallace included repeated references to the 10th Amendment in his infamous School House Door speech at the University of Alabama opposing forced integration in 1963.

'This amendment sustains the right of self-government and grants the State of Alabama the right to enforce its laws and regulate its internal affairs,' Wallace said.

'There can be no submission to the theory that the Central Government is anything but a servant of the people. We are a God-fearing people – not government-fearing people. We practice today the free heritage bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers.' 

'There can be no submission to the theory that the Central Government is anything but a servant of the people. We are a God-fearing people – not government-fearing people. We practice today the free heritage bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers,' Wallace said, invoking a 'states' rights' mantra that would would continue as an argument by the conservative movement in opposition to federal control. 

However the courts have ruled it has its limitations, as when it comes in conflict with other Due Process and 14th Amendment rights. 

In 1997, the Supreme Court reaffirmed states' rights not to be commandeered into serving as an arm of the federal regulatory structure in Printz v. United states. The ruling, which had to do with the Brady handgun law, came on a 5-4 ruling on whether sheriffs could be compelled to conduct background checks. 

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: 'The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States' officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.' He added: 'Such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.'

Scalia's son, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, has been reported to be a likely member of President Trump's task force on reopening the country. 

In another opinion, Justice Samuel Alito made similar arguments in Murphy v. NCAA, a case having to do with sports betting in New Jersey in defiance of a federal law. 

'The anti-commandeering doctrine may sound arcane, but it is simply the expression of a fundamental structural decision incorporated into the Constitution, i.e., the decision to withhold from Congress the power to issue orders directly to the States,' wrote Alito.

'Conspicuously absent from the list of powers given to Congress is the power to issue direct orders to the governments of the States. The anti-commandeering doctrine simply represents the recognition of this limit on congressional authority,' he added. 

An Anti-Commandeering doctrine arose that played out in numerous court cases. Conservatives invoked the 10th Amendment to try to bring down Obamacare in 2012. But the Trump administration has departed from a states' rights framework in efforts to end California's 'sanctuary' laws on enforcing laws against illegal immigration. 

The legal framework for for the federalist structure dates to the first days of the republic. 

James Madison wrote that Congress 'could not' execute powers not expressly granted to it. 

'Interference with the power of the States was no constitutional criterion of the power of Congress. If the power was not given, Congress could not exercise it; if given, they might exercise it, although it should interfere with the laws, or even the Constitutions of the States,' he wrote.

In Federalist No 45, he wrote: 'The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.'

The CDC does have limited powers to issue to impose quarantines, as law professor Jonathan Turley wrote Tuesday. Turley became one of the most cited experts during impeachment when he made statements criticizing the articles brought by Democrats. 

But the laws on the books are intended to allow the federal government to step in when states are refusing to protect the public health adequately. Trump appears to be suggesting that the president has the authority to supersede lawful state measures imposed on their citizens to protect their safety. 

'Yet the pandemic rules were designed to ensure more protective health measures, not protect against them,' Turley wrote. 

Questioned by DailyMail.com Monday on how he would overcome the 10th Amendment to impose his will on governors in the event of a stand-off, Trump declined to cite a statute that empowers the president.

'If some states refuse to open, I would like to see that person run for election. They're going to open. They're going to all open. I think that's something that's not going to happen,' he said. 

Trump has lashed out at groups of governors, mostly Democrats, banding together to make their own joint decisions on when to reopen their economies – comparing them to mutineers. 

'Tell the Democrat Governors that 'Mutiny On The Bounty' was one of my all time favorite movies. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!' he wrote Tuesday, after being rebuked for claiming 'total' authority on reopening the country.  

It was one of several comments when the president referenced the massive leverage he holds, regardless of whether he has express authority to lift stay-home orders. He accused Cuomo of 'begging' him for relief supplies to assist his state, the hardest hit and the world's leading hot-spot for the coronavirus pandemic. 

'Cuomo's been calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state's responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc. I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won't happen!' Trump wrote. 

Still to be determined is how the situation might play out if some governors refuse to heed Trump's demands, and other more pro-Trump governors decide to go along. The president could use the division to try to accuse governors of causing the economic hardships which have already left 20 million Americans unemployed with a massive drop in the nation's wealth.  

Cuomo did not dispute that he had asked for urgently needed supplies, but said Tuesday he would not engage – beyond comparing him to a king.

'We don't have a king in this country. We didn't want a king, so we have a Constitution and we elect a president,' Cuomo said.

Cuomo also quoted Alexander Hamilton, a New Yorker who was an advocate for strong federal power, who Cuomo said was 'in many ways was representative of this discussion of the balance of power.'

'The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendency over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.' 

Cuomo said of Trump: 'The president is clearly spoiling for a fight on this issue,' Cuomo responded. 'The worst thing we can do in all of this is start with political division and start with partisanship. ... This is too important for anyone to play politics.'