916
Thomas, J., dissenting
constitutional issue and issued a revised report that focused entirely on the factual question whether McCreery satisfied the state residency requirement. Id., at 1059-1061 (Dec. 7, 1807). After receiving the new report, the House seated McCreery with a resolution simply saying: "Resolved, That William McCreery is entitled to his seat in this House." Id., at 1237 (Dec. 24, 1807). By overwhelming majorities, the House rejected both a proposal to specify that McCreery possessed "the qualifications required by the law of Maryland," ibid., and a proposal to declare only that he was "duly qualified, agreeably to the constitution of the United States," id., at 1231. Far from supporting the majority's position, the McCreery episode merely demonstrates that the 10th House of Representatives was deeply divided over whether state legislatures may add to the qualifications set forth in the Constitution.38
The majority needs more than that. The prohibition that today's majority enforces is found nowhere in the text of the Qualifications Clauses. In the absence of evidence that the Clauses nonetheless were generally understood at the time of the framing to imply such a prohibition, we may not use the Clauses to invalidate the decisions of a State or its people.
III
It is radical enough for the majority to hold that the Constitution implicitly precludes the people of the States from prescribing any eligibility requirements for the congres-38 Though obliquely acknowledging this fact, the majority thinks it relevant that some subsequent commentators have mistakenly accepted the gloss put on the McCreery case by two editors in 1834. See ante, at 817-818 (citing treatises, each of which relies upon Cases of Contested Elections in Congress (M. Clarke & D. Hall eds. 1834)). But surely we need not accept an inaccurate view of history merely because it has appeared in print. The majority also cites Thomas Jefferson's hazy recollection of the McCreery case, see ante, at 817, without acknowledging Jefferson's conclusion that the States were free to supplement the Qualifications Clauses. See supra, at 873-874.
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