Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Thomas, J., dissenting
In particular, the detail with which the majority recites the historical evidence set forth in Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486 (1969), should not obscure the fact that this evidence has no bearing on the question now before the Court. As the majority ultimately concedes, see ante, at 792-793, 796, 798, it does not establish "the Framers' intent that the qualifications in the Constitution be fixed and exclusive," ante, at 790; it shows only that the Framers did not intend Congress to be able to enact qualifications laws.18 If any-18 For instance, the majority quotes at length from the debate that arose in the Philadelphia Convention when the Committee of Detail proposed the following clause: "The Legislature of the United States shall have authority to establish such uniform qualifications of the members of each House, with regard to property, as to the said Legislature shall seem expedient." See 2 Farrand 179, 248-251; ante, at 790-791. The defeat of this proposal—like the defeat of Gouverneur Morris' motion to drop the words "with regard to property" from the clause, so as to empower Congress to enact qualifications of any sort—simply reflects the Framers' decision not to grant Congress the power to supplement the constitutional qualifications. Considered out of context, some of James Madison's comments during the debate might be thought to go farther. See ibid. But the majority itself properly dispels this false impression. See ante, at 793, n. 10; see also Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S., at 534.
Likewise, Powell drew support from Alexander Hamilton's comments in The Federalist No. 60, which the majority also quotes. See ante, at 791. But as the majority concedes, when Hamilton wrote that "[t]he qualifications of the persons who may choose or be chosen [for Congress] . . . are defined and fixed in the Constitution, and are unalterable by the legislature," he was merely restating his prior observation that the power to set qualifications "forms no part of the power to be conferred upon the national government." See The Federalist No. 60, at 371 (emphasis added). Indeed, only if "the legislature" to which Hamilton was referring is Congress can one make sense of his remark that the qualifications of voters as well as Congressmen are "fixed in the Constitution" and "unalterable by the legislature." Hamilton surely knew that the States or the people of the States control eligibility for the franchise. See Art. I, § 2, cl. 1.
The majority does omit the context necessary to understand one aspect of the historical evidence presented in Powell. The majority quotes Powell's observation that "on the eve of the Constitutional Convention, English precedent stood for the proposition that 'the law of the land had regulated
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