900
Thomas, J., dissenting
the Federal Constitution had been understood to deprive the States of this significant power, one might well have expected its opponents to seize on this point in arguing against ratification.
The fact is that arguments based on the absence of recorded debate at the ratification conventions are suspect, because the surviving records of those debates are fragmentary. We have no records at all of the debates in several of the conventions, 3 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution 7 (M. Jensen ed. 1978), and only spotty records from most of the others, see ibid.; 1 id., at 34-35; 4 Elliot 342; Hutson, The Creation of the Constitution: The Integrity of the Documentary Record, 65 Texas L. Rev. 1, 21-23 (1986).
If one concedes that the absence of relevant records from the ratification debates is not strong evidence for either side, then the majority's only significant piece of evidence from the ratification period is The Federalist No. 52. Contrary to the majority's assertion, however, this essay simply does not talk about "the lack of state control over the qualifications of the elected," whether "explicitly" or otherwise. See ante, at 806.
It is true that The Federalist No. 52 contrasts the Constitution's treatment of the qualifications of voters in elections for the House of Representatives with its treatment of the qualifications of the Representatives themselves. As Madison noted, the Framers did not specify any uniform qualifications for the franchise in the Constitution; instead, they simply incorporated each State's rules about eligibility to vote in elections for the most numerous branch of the state legislature. By contrast, Madison continued, the Framers chose to impose some particular qualifications that all Members of the House had to satisfy. But while Madison did say that the qualifications of the elected were "more susceptible of uniformity" than the qualifications of electors, The Federalist No. 52, at 326, he did not say that the Constitution
Page: Index Previous 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007