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Page Number: 68.0

26 

UNITED STATES v. TEXAS 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

“the pretended Power of Dispensing with Laws or the Exe-
cution of Laws by Rega[l] Authorit[y] as it ha[s] bee[n] as-
sumed and exercised of late.”13 

By  the  time  of  the  American  Revolution,  British  mon-
archs had long abandoned the power to resist laws enacted 
by  Parliament,14  but  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
charged  George  III  with  exercising  those  powers  with  re-
spect  to  colonial  enactments.    One  of  the  leading  charges 
against  him  was  that  he  had  “forbidden  his  Governors  to 
pass  Laws  of  immediate  and  pressing  importance,  unless
suspended in their operation till his Assent should be ob-
tained; and when so suspended, . . . ha[d] utterly neglected
to attend to them.”15 

By  1787,  six  State  Constitutions  contained  provisions
prohibiting the suspension of laws,16 and at the Constitu-
tional  Convention,  a  proposal  to  grant  the  President  sus-
pending  authority  was  unanimously  defeated.17  Many 
—————— 

13 An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling 
the  Succession  of  the  Crown  (Bill  of  Rights),  1  W.  &  M.,  Sess.  2,  c.  2 
(1689). 

14 The last time a British monarch withheld assent to a bill enacted by 

Parliament was in 1708.  18 HL J. 506 (Mar. 11, 1708). 

15 Declaration  of  Independence  ¶4;  In  1774,  Jefferson  had  addressed 
the subject of this charge, explaining that British monarchs “for several 
ages past” had “declined the exercise of this power in that part of [the] 
empire called Great Britain” but had resumed the practice in the Amer-
ican Colonies and had “rejected laws of the most salutary tendency,” such 
as  one  forbidding  the  importation  of  slaves.    T.  Jefferson,  A  Summary 
View of the Rights of British America (1774), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ 
18th_century/jeffsumm.asp.  See G. Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s 
Declaration of Independence 69 (1978). 

16 See generally S. Calabresi, S. Agudo, & K. Dore, State Bills of Rights 
in 1787 and 1791: What Individual Rights Are Really Deeply Rooted in 
American  History  and  Tradition?  85  S.  Cal.  L. Rev.  1451,  1534–1535 
(2012)  (reporting  that  six  State  Constitutions  had  such  provisions  in 
1787, rising to eight by 1791). 

17 1  The  Records  of  the  Federal  Convention  of  1787,  pp. 103–104  (M. 
Farrand ed. 1966).  See generally R. Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The