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Opinion of the Court
(1992); Wyoming v. Oklahoma, 502 U. S. 437 (1992). Many of these disputes have involved the allocation of shared resources among the States, a category perhaps broad enough to encompass the allocation of scarce disposal space for radioactive waste. See, e. g., Colorado v. New Mexico, 459 U. S. 176 (1982); Arizona v. California, 373 U. S. 546 (1963). The United States suggests that if the Court may resolve such interstate disputes, Congress can surely do the same under the Commerce Clause. The regional compacts support this argument with a series of quotations from The Federalist and other contemporaneous documents, which the compacts contend demonstrate that the Framers established a strong National Legislature for the purpose of resolving trade disputes among the States. Brief for Rocky Mountain Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact et al. as Amici Curiae 17, and n. 16.
While the Framers no doubt endowed Congress with the power to regulate interstate commerce in order to avoid further instances of the interstate trade disputes that were common under the Articles of Confederation, the Framers did not intend that Congress should exercise that power through the mechanism of mandating state regulation. The Constitution established Congress as "a superintending authority over the reciprocal trade" among the States, The Federalist No. 42, p. 268 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961), by empowering Congress to regulate that trade directly, not by authorizing Congress to issue trade-related orders to state governments. As Madison and Hamilton explained, "a sovereignty over sovereigns, a government over governments, a legislation for communities, as contradistinguished from individuals, as it is a solecism in theory, so in practice it is subversive of the order and ends of civil polity." Id., No. 20, at 138.
B
The sited state respondents focus their attention on the process by which the Act was formulated. They correctly
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