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UNITED STATES v. MORRISON

Souter, J., dissenting

took care in The Federalist No. 46 to hedge his argument for
limited power by explaining the importance of national poli-
tics in protecting the States’ interests. The National Gov-
ernment “will partake sufﬁciently of the spirit [of the States],
to be disinclined to invade the rights of the individual States,
or the prerogatives of their governments.” The Federalist
No. 46, p. 319 (J. Cooke ed. 1961). James Wilson likewise
noted that “it was a favorite object in the Convention” to
secure the sovereignty of the States, and that it had been
achieved through the structure of the Federal Government.
2 Elliot’s Debates 438–439.17 The Framers of the Bill of
Rights, in turn, may well have sensed that Madison and Wil-
son were right about politics as the determinant of the fed-
eral balance within the broad limits of a power like com-
merce, for they formulated the Tenth Amendment without
any provision comparable to the speciﬁc guarantees proposed
for individual liberties.18
In any case, this Court recognized
the political component of federalism in the seminal Gibbons
opinion. After declaring the plenary character of congres-
sional power within the sphere of activity affecting com-
merce, the Chief Justice spoke for the Court in explaining
that there was only one restraint on its valid exercise:

17 Statements to similar effect pervade the ratiﬁcation debates. See,
e. g., 2 id., at 166–170 (Massachusetts, remarks of Samuel Stillman); 2 id.,
at 251–253 (New York, remarks of Alexander Hamilton); 4 id., at 95–98
(North Carolina, remarks of James Iredell).

18 The majority’s special solicitude for “areas of traditional state regu-
lation,” ante, at 615, is thus founded not on the text of the Constitution
but on what has been termed the “spirit of the Tenth Amendment,”
Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S., at 585
(O’Connor, J., dissenting) (emphasis in original). Susceptibility to what
Justice Holmes more bluntly called “some invisible radiation from the
general terms of the Tenth Amendment,” Missouri v. Holland, 252 U. S.
416, 434 (1920), has increased in recent years, in disregard of his admoni-
tion that “[w]e must consider what this country has become in deciding
what that Amendment has reserved,” ibid.