Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-1314_3ea4.pdf
Page Number: 62.0

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

23 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

regime, because the text of the Clause confers the power to 
do exactly (and only) that.”  Id., at ___, n. 6 (slip op., at 11, 
n. 6).  Under the majority’s interpretation of Section 2a(c),
however, Congress has done the opposite of preempting or 
displacing state law—it has adopted state law. 

Normally,  when  “a  serious  doubt  of  constitutionality  is
raised,  it  is  a  cardinal  principle  that  this  Court  will  first 
ascertain  whether  a  construction  of  the  statute  is  fairly
possible  by which  the  question  may  be  avoided.”    Crowell 
v.  Benson,  285  U. S.  22,  62  (1932).    The  multiple  serious 
constitutional  doubts  raised  by  the  majority’s  interpreta-
tion of Section 2a(c)—in addition to the sheer weakness of
its  reading  as  a  textual  matter—provide  more  than 
enough  reason  to  reject  the  majority’s  construction.    Sec-
tion 2a(c) does not apply to this case. 

III 
Justice Jackson once wrote that the Constitution speaks
in  “majestic  generalities.”  West  Virginia  Bd.  of  Ed.  v. 
Barnette,  319  U. S.  624,  639  (1943).    In  many  places  it 
does,  and  so  we  have  cases  expounding  on  “freedom  of 
speech”  and  “unreasonable  searches  and  seizures.” 
Amdts.  1,  4.    Yet  the  Constitution  also  speaks  in  some
places with elegant specificity.  A Member of the House of 
Representatives  must  be  25  years  old.  Art. I,  §2,  cl. 2. 
Every  State  gets  two  Senators.    Art. I,  §3,  cl. 1.    And  the 
times,  places,  and  manner  of  holding  elections  for  those
federal  representatives  “shall  be  prescribed  in  each  State 
by the Legislature thereof.”  Art. I, §4, cl. 1.

For the reasons I have explained, there is no real doubt 
about what “the Legislature” means.  The Framers of the 
Constitution were “practical men, dealing with the facts of
political  life  as  they  understood  them,  putting  into  form
the  government  they  were  creating,  and  prescribing  in 
language  clear  and  intelligible  the  powers  that  govern-
ment  was  to  take.”  South  Carolina  v.  United  States,  199