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8 

TORRES v. TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY 

Opinion of the Court 

States from frustrating national objectives in this field.

History teaches the same lesson.  “When the Framers met 
in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, they sought to cre-
ate a cohesive national sovereign in response to the failings
of the Articles of Confederation.”  PennEast,  594 U. S., at 
___ (slip op., at 22).  The Founders recognized, first and fore-
most, “that the confederation produced no security agai[nst] 
foreign invasion; congress not being permitted to prevent a 
war  nor  to  support  it  by  the[ir]  own  authority,”  because 
Congress  lacked  the  power  to  marshal  and  maintain  a 
fighting  force  “fit  for  defence.”    1  Records  of  the  Federal 
Convention of 1787, p. 19 (M. Farrand ed. 1966) (Edmund
Randolph opening remarks) (alterations in original). 

“[T]he want of power in Congress to raise an army” had
left  the  National  Government  “dependen[t]  upon  the 
States” to supply military forces via a system of quotas and 
requisition  that  had  nearly  cost  the  Nation  victory  in  the
Revolutionary  War.  Selective  Draft  Law  Cases,  245  U. S. 
366, 381 (1918).  George Washington warned from the bat-
tlefield that, unless Congress is “vested with powers by the
several States” to raise an army, “our cause is lost.”  Letter 
to J. Jones (May 31, 1780), in 8 Writings of George Wash-
ington 304 (W. Ford ed. 1890).  In short, “[t]he experience
of the whole country, during the revolutionary war, estab-
lished, to the satisfaction of every statesman, the utter in-
adequacy and impropriety of this system of requisition.”  3 
J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United 
States §1174, p. 65 (1833) (Story).  The need to fix that fail-
ing  by  establishing  a  strong  national  power  to  raise  and 
maintain a military was one of the “recognized necessities” 
for calling the Constitutional Convention.  Selective  Draft 
Law Cases, 245 U. S., at 381. 

The Constitution, by design, worked “an entire change in
the first principles of the system.”  The Federalist No. 23, 
at  148  (A.  Hamilton).  The  Framers  gave  Congress  direct 
power  over  the  “formation,  direction  or  support  of  the