Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-179_o75q.pdf
Page Number: 27.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

3 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

good, may be hastily and unadvisedly passed,” section III of 
the New York Constitution required the two Houses of the 
New  York  Legislature  to  present  “all  bills  which  have 
passed  the  senate  and  assembly”  to  the  “council  for  their 
revisal and consideration.”  Ibid.  The Council’s power “to 
revise legislation” meant that, if it “objected to any measure 
of a bill, it would return a detailed list of its objections to 
the legislature,” which “could change the bill to conform to 
those objections, override” them by a two-thirds vote of both 
Houses, “or simply let the bill die.”  J. Barry, Comment: The 
Council of Revision and the Limits of Judicial Power, 56 U. 
Chi.  L.  Rev.  235,  245  (1989)  (Barry)  (emphasis  deleted).1  
The  grounds  for  the  Council’s  vetoes  “ranged  from  an  act 
being ‘inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution’ to an 
act being passed without ‘the persons affected thereby hav-
ing an opportunity of being heard’ ” to an act being “ ‘incon-
sistent with the public good.’ ”  Id., at 245–246 (alteration 
and footnote omitted). 
  At first, the Council was a well-respected institution, and 
several  prominent  delegates  to  the  Philadelphia  Conven-
tion sought to replicate it in the Federal Constitution.  Res-
olution 8 of the Virginia Plan proposed a federal council of 
revision composed of “the Executive and a convenient num-
ber of the National Judiciary” that would have “authority 
to examine [and veto] every act of the National Legislature 
before it shall operate.”  1 Records of the Federal Conven-
tion of 1787, §8, p. 21 (M. Farrand ed. 1911) (Farrand).  The 
Council’s veto would “be final . . . unless the Act of the Na-
tional Legislature be again passed.”  Ibid.; see also J. Mal-
colm, Whatever the Judges Say It Is? The Founders and Ju-
dicial Review, 26 J. L. & Politics 1, 30–33 (2010). 
  The proponents of a council were clear that they sought 
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1 The term “revise” was understood to mean “[t]o review.”  2 S. Johnson, 
A Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed. 1773); N. Bailey, A Uni-
versal Etymological English Dictionary (22 ed. 1770) (“to review, to look 
over again”).