520
Opinion of the Court
which she relies for the proposition that the States have such a reserved power are distinguishable. Second, there is countervailing historical evidence. Third, and of decisive significance, the means employed to issue the instructions, ballots for congressional elections, are unacceptable unless Article VIII is a permissible exercise of the State's power to regulate the manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives. Only a brief comment on the first two points is necessary.
Petitioner relies heavily on the part instructions played in the Second Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, the early Congress, the selection of United States Senators before the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, and the ratification of certain federal constitutional amendments.13 However, unlike Article VIII, none of petitioner's examples was coupled with an express legal sanction for disobedience.14 At best, as an amicus curiae for petitioner points out, and as petitioner herself acknowledges, such historical instructions at one point in the early Republic may have had "de facto binding force" because it might have been "political suicide" not to follow them.15 This evidence falls short of demonstrating that either the people or the States
13 Brief for Petitioner 10-17.
14 For example, the Provincial Congress of North Carolina passed the following instruction on April 12, 1776: "Resolved, That the Delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be empowered to concur with the Delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency, and forming foreign alliances, reserving to this Colony the sole and exclusive right of forming a Constitution and Laws for this Colony . . . ." 5 American Archives 860 (P. Force ed. 1844).
15 Brief for Professor Kris W. Kobach as Amicus Curiae 5, 13; see Brief for Petitioner 14, n. 13. But see 1 Annals of Cong. 744 (1789) (remarks of Rep. Wadsworth) ("I have known, myself, that [instructions] have been disobeyed, and yet the representative was not brought to account for it; on the contrary, he was caressed and re-elected, while those who have obeyed them, contrary to their private sentiments, have ever after been despised for it").
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