912
Thomas, J., dissenting
(Virginia) (similar). If the majority is correct that these conventions also "voiced support for term limits for Members of Congress," see ante, at 826,35 then the evidence from these conventions supports my position rather than the majority's: the conventions deemed it necessary for the Constitution itself to impose term limits on the President (because no State could do that on its own), but they did not think it necessary for the Constitution to impose term limits on Members of Congress. This understanding at the Virginia and North Carolina conventions meshes with the election laws adopted by both States, which reflected the view that States could supplement the Qualifications Clauses. See supra, at 905, and n. 31, 909.36
35 The majority correctly notes that each convention, in addition to proposing a list of specific "Amendments to the Constitution," proposed a "Declaration of Rights" to be appended to the Constitution. In both States, this "Declaration" contained the general exhortation that members of both the Legislative and Executive Branches "should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into the mass of the people, and the vacancies be supplied by certain and regular elections." 4 Elliot 243; 3 id., at 657-658. But both Declarations went on to state that at these elections, the previous occupants of the office in question should "be eligible or ineligible [for reelection], as the rules of the constitution of government and the laws shall direct." 4 id., at 243; 3 id., at 658. Accordingly, it is hard to describe either Declaration as a "proposed . . . constitutional amendment supporting term limits for Members of Congress." See ante, at 826, n. 40.
36 As for New York, the State's ratifying convention did propose amending the Federal Constitution to provide "[t]hat no person be eligible as a senator for more than six years in any term of twelve years." 1 Elliot 329-330. The majority finds it significant that when this suggestion fell on deaf ears, New Yorkers did not amend their State Constitution to impose this restriction on their state legislature's appointment authority. Before the Seventeenth Amendment was adopted, however, the Federal Constitution vested the choice of Senators in the state legislatures rather than the people. See Art. I, § 3, cl. 1. At least without a delegation of this authority from the legislature, cf. supra, at 878-882, and n. 16, the people of New York may well have thought that they could no more amend
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