Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-1314_3ea4.pdf
Page Number: 31

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

27 

Opinion of the Court 

While  attention  focused  on  potential  abuses  by  state-
level  politicians,  and  the  consequent  need  for  congres- 
sional oversight, the legislative processes by which the States 
could  exercise  their  initiating  role  in  regulating  congres­
sional  elections  occasioned  no  debate.  That  is  hardly
surprising.    Recall  that  when  the  Constitution  was  com­
posed in Philadelphia and later ratified, the people’s legis­
lative  prerogatives—the  initiative  and  the  referendum—
were not yet in our democracy’s arsenal.  See supra, at 3– 
5.  The Elections Clause, however, is not reasonably read
to  disarm  States  from  adopting  modes  of  legislation  that 
place the lead rein in the people’s hands.24 

2 
The  Arizona  Legislature  maintains  that,  by  specifying
“the Legislature thereof,” the Elections Clause renders the
State’s  representative  body  the  sole  “component  of  state
government authorized to prescribe . . . regulations . . . for 
congressional  redistricting.”  Brief  for  Appellant  30.  THE 
CHIEF JUSTICE, in dissent, agrees.  But it is characteristic 
of  our  federal  system  that  States  retain  autonomy  to
establish their own governmental processes.  See Alden v. 
Maine,  527  U. S.  706,  752  (1999)  (“A  State  is  entitled  to 
order the processes of its own governance.”); The Federal­
ist No. 43, at 272 (J. Madison) (“Whenever the States may 
choose  to  substitute  other  republican  forms,  they  have  a 

—————— 

24 THE  CHIEF  JUSTICE,  in  dissent,  cites  U. S.  Term  Limits,  Inc.  v. 
Thornton, 514 U. S. 779 (1995), as an important precedent we overlook. 
Post,  at  24–25.    There,  we  held  that  state-imposed  term  limits  on
candidates for the House and Senate violated the Clauses of the Consti­
tution  setting  forth  qualifications  for  membership  in  Congress,  Art. I,
§2, cl. 2, and Art. I, §3, cl. 3.  We did so for a reason entirely harmoni­
ous with today’s decision.  Adding state-imposed limits to the qualifica­
tions set forth in the Constitution, the Court wrote, would be “contrary 
to the ‘fundamental principle of our representative democracy,’ . . . that 
‘the  people  should  choose  whom  they  please  to  govern  them.’ ”  514 
U. S., at 783 (quoting Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486, 547 (1969)).