One question hovering over the voting rights case now before the Supreme Court is whether there should have been a special counsel appointed to represent New York. The case involves the question of whether the federal government can require certain states or counties they don’t trust to run an unbiased election to submit for preclearance in Washington any changes to their election procedures. A brief for New York State was filed by its attorney general, Eric Schneiderman. But he took the side of the federal government.

No one is suggesting that Mr. Schneiderman did anything wrong or unethical. New York City’s lawyer, Michael Cardozo, also took the government’s side. They both dispute the claim by the central party in the case, Shelby County, Alabama, that Congress exceeded its authority when, in 2006, it renewed Section 5 of the Acting Rights Act and is now relying on outdated data. But the entry of Messrs. Schneiderman and Cardozo on the side of the federal government meant that no one stood up for the standing of New York under the 10th Amendment.

The 10th Amendment is the article of the Bill of Rights that reserves to the states and the people powers not granted to the federal government. The Congress is granted, in the 15th Amendment, broad powers to make sure that election procedures don’t deny citizens the right to vote because of race. It used the power when, in 1965, it enacted what is, in the Voting Rights Act, one of the most glorious laws ever entered into the United States Code. It admitted African Americans to the political process and spelled the end of the Jim Crow era.

Section 5 of the law, however, has been much fought over. It deals with certain states or jurisdictions that the federal government doesn’t trust to make on their own workaday changes to election procedures. Under Section 5, all or part of 16 states have to get pre-clearance from the federal government to change their election process. The parts of New York that are covered are mainly the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. Mr. Schneiderman joined with Mississippi, California, and North Carolina to argue that the benefits of pre-clearance outweigh the hassles.

He may win at the high court. The Constitution has checks and balances. The power to prescribe the manner of electing members of Congress is given to the states, but Congress can alter such regulations at “at any time.” Broad is the power that the 15th Amendment gives Congress to make sure that, in any election, the right of citizens to vote is not being denied, or even abridged, on account of race. The Constitution, though, does not give to the Congress the authority to run everyday elections. Under the 10th Amendment, all powers not given to the Congress are left with the people or the states.

This is one of the principles at issue in the voting rights case. Yet neither Messrs. Schneiderman nor Cardozo spoke up for New York’s rights under the 10th amendment. This is all the more glaring because the 10th Amendment has a special history in New York. This goes back to 1788, when New Yorkers, via a convention at Poughkeepsie, ratified the Constitution. When approval was finally given, it was with a caveat. New Yorkers wanted certain rights to be spelled out. A declaration of “impressions” to that effect was issued at Poughkeepsie.

There were a number of points New Yorkers took the trouble to mark.* One was that every power and jurisdiction not clearly delegated to the Congress would remain with the people or their state governments. Eventually, that became the last article of the Bill of Rights. Yet even though the point was so important to New York that a special note about it was issued by the state’s ratifying convention, neither Attorney General Schneiderman nor Mr. Cardozo gave it so much as a how-do-you-do in their filing in the voting rights case.

The Supreme Court may yet rule that Congress was within its authority when it extended Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The section is so popular that it passed the Senate 98 to zero. But at the hearing last month, the sages appeared to be divided. Justices Kagan, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor — all three of them New Yorkers — put up a rip-roaring defense of the Congress. Yet it’s also possible the court will strike down Section Five.

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As we were reflecting on this question, a dispatch came in by one of the great southern editors, Brandt Ayers of the Anniston Star. Mr. Ayers, like Hodding Carter’s family at the Delta Democrat-Times in Mississippi or Ralph McGill at the Constitution in Atlanta, gambled their newspapers and everything else they had to stand with the civil rights movement. The piece, pegged to both the anniversary marked over the weekend at Selma and the voting rights case before the court, suggests that it may be time to “let local mayors and district attorneys and newspaper editors see if they can’t keep justice alive all by themselves.”

That, after all is the spirit of the 10th Amendment. It’s illuminating that the spirit is being voiced by such a civil rights hero as Brandt Ayers. It’s a sentiment we’d have loved to hear from one of the leaders of New York. The danger is that at someday New York will find itself wanting the shelter of the 10th amendment only to be confronted by a Supreme Court that asks why the state didn’t assert its rights when it could have been unpopular — or merely a hassle.

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* Among the points marked as particularly important to New York was the right to keep arms and carry them around.