950
Stevens, J., dissenting
1798, ch. 54, § 2, 1 Stat. 567 (specifying that these obligations "shall be the duty of the clerk" (emphasis added)). Not long thereafter, the Seventh Congress mandated that state courts maintain a registry of aliens seeking naturalization. Court clerks were required to receive certain information from aliens, record those data, and provide certificates to the aliens; the statute specified fees to be received by local officials in compensation. Act of Apr. 14, 1802, ch. 28, § 2, 2 Stat. 154- 155 (specifying that these burdens "shall be the duty of such clerk" including clerks "of a . . . state" (emphasis added)).9
Similarly, the First Congress enacted legislation requiring state courts to serve, functionally, like contemporary regula-9 The majority asserts that these statutes relating to the administration of the federal naturalization scheme are not proper evidence of the original understanding because over a century later, in Holmgren v. United States, 217 U. S. 509 (1910), this Court observed that that case did not present the question whether the States can be required to enforce federal laws "against their consent," id., at 517. The majority points to similar comments in United States v. Jones, 109 U. S. 513, 519-520 (1883). See ante, at 906.
Those cases are unpersuasive authority. First, whatever their statements in dicta, the naturalization statutes at issue there, as made clear in the text, were framed in quite mandatory terms. Even the majority only goes so far as to say that "[i]t may well be" that these facially mandatory statutes in fact rested on voluntary state participation. Ibid. Any suggestion to the contrary is belied by the language of the statutes themselves.
Second, both of the cases relied upon by the majority rest on now-rejected doctrine. In Jones, the Court indicated that various duties, including the requirement that state courts of appropriate jurisdiction hear federal questions, "could not be enforced against the consent of the States." 109 U. S., at 520. That view was unanimously resolved to the contrary thereafter in the Second Employers' Liability Cases, 223 U. S. 1, 57 (1912), and in Testa v. Katt, 330 U. S. 386 (1947).
Finally, the Court suggests that the obligation set forth in the latter two cases that state courts hear federal claims is "voluntary" in that States need not create courts of ordinary jurisdiction. That is true, but unhelpful to the majority. If a State chooses to have no local law enforcement officials it may avoid the Brady Act's requirements, and if it chooses to have no courts it may avoid Testa. But neither seems likely.
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