Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
representatives belongs not to the States, but to the people. From the start, the Framers recognized that the "great and radical vice" of the Articles of Confederation was "the principle of LEGISLATION for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, and as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of whom they consist." The Federalist No. 15, at 108 (Hamilton). Thus the Framers, in perhaps their most important contribution, conceived of a Federal Government directly responsible to the people, possessed of direct power over the people, and chosen directly, not by States, but by the people. See, e. g., supra, at 802-804. The Framers implemented this ideal most clearly in the provision, extant from the beginning of the Republic, that calls for the Members of the House of Representatives to be "chosen every second Year by the People of the several States." Art. I, § 2, cl. 1. Following the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, this ideal was extended to elections for the Senate. The Congress of the United States, therefore, is not a confederation of nations in which separate sovereigns are represented by appointed delegates, but is instead a body composed of representatives of the people. As Chief Justice John Marshall observed: "The government of the Union, then, . . . is, emphatically, and truly, a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit." McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat., at 404-405.31
Ours is a "government of the people, by the people, for the people." A. Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863).
31 Cf. Hawke v. Smith (No. 1), 253 U. S. 221, 226 (1920) ("The Constitution of the United States was ordained by the people, and, when duly ratified, it became the Constitution of the people of the United States"). Compare U. S. Const., Preamble ("We the People"), with The Articles of Confederation, reprinted in 2 Bailyn 926 ("we the under signed Delegates of the States").
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