872
Thomas, J., dissenting
the people of the States and their state legislatures from setting any eligibility requirements for the candidates who seek to represent them.
As for the majority's related assertion that the Framers intended qualification requirements to be uniform, this is a conclusion, not an argument. Indeed, it is a conclusion that the Qualifications Clauses themselves contradict. At the time of the framing, and for some years thereafter, the Clauses' citizenship requirements incorporated laws that varied from State to State. Thus, the Qualifications Clauses themselves made it possible that a person would be qualified to represent State A in Congress even though a similarly situated person would not be qualified to represent State B.
To understand this point requires some background. Before the Constitution was adopted, citizenship was controlled entirely by state law, and the different States established different criteria. See J. Kettner, Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870, pp. 213-218 (1978). Even after the Constitution gave Congress the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization . . . throughout the United States," Art. I, § 8, cl. 4, Congress was under no obligation to do so, and the Framers surely expected state law to continue in full force unless and until Congress acted. Cf. Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122, 196 (1819) (so interpreting the other part of § 8, cl. 4, which empowers Congress to establish "uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies").13 Accordingly, the constitutional requirement that
13 Even when Congress enacted the first federal naturalization law in 1790, it left open the possibility that the individual States could establish more lenient standards of their own for admitting people to citizenship. While Hamilton had suggested that Congress' power to "establish an uniform Rule" logically precluded the States from deviating downward from the rule that Congress established, see The Federalist No. 32, at 199, the early cases on this question took the opposite view. See Collet v. Collet, 2 Dall. 294, 296 (CC Pa. 1792) (Wilson, Blair, and Peters, JJ.). States therefore continued to enact naturalization laws of their own until 1795,
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