Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-1314_3ea4.pdf
Page Number: 53

14 

ARIZONA STATE LEGISLATURE v. ARIZONA 

INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMM’N
 
ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting
 

the  majority  acknowledges,  the  distinction  between  “the
Legislature” and the people “occasioned no debate.”  Ante, 
at  27.  That  is  because  everybody  understood  what  “the
Legislature” meant.

The  majority  contends  that  its  counterintuitive  reading
of  “the  Legislature”  is  necessary  to  advance  the  “animat-
ing principle” of popular sovereignty.  Ante, at 24.  But the 
ratification  of  the  Constitution  was  the  ultimate  act  of 
popular sovereignty, and the people who ratified the Elec-
tions  Clause  did  so  knowing  that  it  assigned  authority  to 
“the Legislature” as a representative body.  The Elections 
Clause  was  not,  as  the  majority  suggests,  an  all-purpose
“safeguard  against  manipulation  of  electoral  rules  by 
politicians.”  Ante,  at  26.  Like  most  provisions  of  the 
Constitution,  the  Elections  Clause  reflected  a  compro-
mise—a  pragmatic  recognition  that  the  grand  project  of 
forging  a  Union  required  everyone  to  accept  some  things 
they  did  not  like.  See  The  Federalist  No.  59,  at  364  (de-
scribing  the  power  allocated  to  state  legislatures  as  “an
evil which could not have been avoided”).  This Court has 
no  power  to  upset  such  a  compromise  simply  because  we
now think that it should have been struck differently.  As 
we  explained  almost  a  century  ago,  “[t]he  framers  of  the 
Constitution might have adopted a different method,” but
it  “is  not  the  function  of  courts  . . .  to  alter  the  method 
which  the  Constitution  has  fixed.”  Hawke,  253  U. S.,  at 
227. 

D 
In addition to text, structure, and history, several prec-
edents interpreting the Elections Clause further reinforce 
that “the Legislature” refers to a representative body. 

The first precedent comes not from this Court, but from
Congress.  Acting  under  its  authority  to  serve  as  “the 
Judge  of  the  Elections,  Returns  and  Qualifications  of  its
own  Members,”  Art. I,  §5,  cl. 1,  the  House  of  Representa-