Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1271_3f14.pdf
Page Number: 61

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

23 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

the  “procedure”  or  “procedures”  of  lawmaking).    A  Gover-
nor’s motives for vetoing a certain bill are irrelevant to the 
effect of the veto as part of the legislative process, just as 
the  motives  that  may  lead  one  house  of  the  legislature  to 
reject a bill passed by the other house are irrelevant to the 
effect of its doing so.  Put simply, when this power is con-
ferred on the Governor of a State, it “makes him in effect a 
third branch of the legislature.”  T. Cooley, General Princi-
ples of Constitutional Law 50 (1880) (emphasis added); ac-
cord, Arizona State Legislature, 576 U. S., at 833 (ROBERTS, 
C. J.,  dissenting)  (noting  that  “approving  [and]  vetoing 
bills” are “legislative functions”); Chadha, 462 U. S., at 947 
(explaining that “lawmaking” is “a power . . . shared by both 
Houses and the President”); La Abra Silver Mining Co. v. 
United States, 175 U. S. 423, 453 (1899) (noting that Presi-
dential  approval  “is  legislative  in  its  nature”);  cf.  1  W. 
Blackstone,  Commentaries  on  the  Laws  of  England  150
(1765)  (“[T]he  king  is  himself  a  part  of  the  parliament”).
This is a question of who, not what, and thus is “a matter of 
state  polity”  as  far  as  the  Elections  Clause  is  concerned.
Smiley, 285 U. S., at 368. 

But  substantive  constraints  on  what  the  lawmaking 
power can do (gubernatorial approval included) demand an 
entirely different justification—one that the majority never 
provides.  It does not overrule Cook and Thornton to hold 
that the power to prescribe times, places, and manners for 
congressional elections is an original power of the people of 
each State.  Nor does it hold that the people are themselves 
“the  Legislature”  to  which  the  Federal  Constitution  dele-
gates that power.  See ante, at 17–18.  Indeed, the majority 
devotes  little  attention  to  the  source  and  recipient  of  the 
power  described  in  the  Elections Clause,  notwithstanding 
their direct relevance to the question presented. 

Instead, the majority focuses on the power of state courts 
to exercise “judicial review” of Elections Clause legislation. 
See ante, at 11–15, 26–30.  But that power sheds no light