Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Thomas, J., dissenting
§ 10, moreover, might have been thought to be implicit in other constitutional provisions or in the very nature of our federal system. Compare, e. g., Art. II, § 2, cl. 2 ("[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties"), and Art. I, § 8, cl. 5 ("The Congress shall have Power . . . [t]o coin Money"), with Art. I, § 10, cl. 1 ("No State shall enter into any Treaty" and "No State shall . . . coin Money"); see also Art. VI, cl. 2 (explicitly declaring that state law cannot override the Constitution). The fact that the Framers nonetheless made these prohibitions express confirms that one should not lightly read provisions like the Qualifications Clauses as implicit deprivations of state power. See generally Barron ex rel. Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243, 249 (1833).12
The majority responds that "a patchwork of state qualifications" would "undermin[e] the uniformity and the national character that the Framers envisioned and sought to ensure." Ante, at 822. Yet the Framers thought it perfectly consistent with the "national character" of Congress for the Senators and Representatives from each State to be chosen by the legislature or the people of that State. The majority never explains why Congress' fundamental character permits this state-centered system, but nonetheless prohibits
12 The principle that the Constitution rests on the consent of the people of the States points in the same direction. Both the process of selecting delegates to the Philadelphia Convention and the ratification procedure erected by Article VII were designed to let the States and the people of the States protect their interests. Lest those protections be evaded, one should not be quick to read the Qualifications Clauses as imposing un-stated prohibitions that pre-empt all state qualifications laws. Cf. L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 6-25, p. 480 (2d ed. 1988) (arguing that courts should hesitate to read federal statutes to pre-empt state law, because "to give the state-displacing weight of federal law to mere congressional ambiguity would evade the very procedure for lawmaking on which Garcia [v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528 (1985)] relied to protect states' interests"); Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 464 (1991) (applying this argument).
871
Page: Index Previous 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007