Cite as: 525 U. S. 316 (1999)
Scalia, J., concurring in part
number. Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language defines "enumerate" as "[t]o count or tell, number by number; to reckon or mention a number of things, each separately"; and defines "enumeration" as "[t]he act of counting or telling a number, by naming each particular," and "[a]n account of a number of things, in which mention is made of every particular article." Samuel Johnson's 1773 Dictionary of the English Language 658 (4th ed.) defines "enumerate" as "[t]o reckon up singly; to count over distinctly; to number"; and "enumeration" as "[t]he act of numbering or counting over; number told out." Thomas Sheridan's 1796 Complete Dictionary of the English Language (6th ed.) defines "enumerate" as "[t]o reckon up singly; to count over distinctly"; and "enumeration" as "[t]he act of numbering or counting over." The notion of counting "singly," "separately," "number by number," "distinctly," which runs through these definitions is incompatible (or at least arguably incompatible, which is all that needs to be established) with gross statistical estimates.
One must also be impressed by the facts recited in the opinion of the Court, ante, at 335: that the Census Acts of 1790 and 1800 required a listing of persons by family name, and the Census Acts of 1810 through 1950 required census enumerators to visit each home in person. This demonstrates a longstanding tradition of Congress's forbidding the use of estimation techniques in conducting the apportionment census. Could it be that all these Congresses were unaware that (in the words of Justice StevensTM dissent) estimation techniques "will make the census more accurate than an admittedly futile attempt to count every individual by personal inspection, interview, or written interrogatory"? Post, at 364. There were difficult-to-reach inhabitants in the early 1800's, just as there are today—indeed, perhaps a greater proportion of them, since the society was overwhelmingly composed of farmers, and largely of frontiersmen. And though there were no professional statisticians,
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