A little known aspect of our Constitution is that it delegates power, not just to the U.S. Government and to its units, but also to persons and entities outside the U.S. Government. In each case, the power to act is derived ultimately from the Constitution. Even when those persons or entities are states or officeholders of states, their authority derives from the Constitution rather than from the pool of authority retained by the states under the Tenth Amendment.
The Constitution’s delegations of power to actors outside the U.S. Government are surprisingly plentiful. The first listed in the Constitution is Article I, Section 2, Clause 1 [hereinafter constitutional citing shown as “I-2-1”], which implicitly authorizes each state to define qualifications for the U.S. Representatives from that state. The Seventeenth Amendment extended this authority to include U.S. Senators.
I-2-4 empowers (and directs) state governors to “issue Writs of Election” to fill vacancies in the House of Representatives.
The original Constitution (I-3-1) also delegated authority to each state “Legislature” to elect U.S. Senators. The word “Legislature” was meant literally: The delegation was to the state representative assembly. It was not to the general state legislative authority, which the assembly might share with the governor (through the veto) or the people (through initiative and referendum). In other words, election of Senators was not subject to the governor’s approval, nor could it be handed off to the people. In addition, I-3-2 empowered each governor to temporarily fill senate vacancies during a legislative recesses. This situation continued until the Seventeenth Amendment moved Senate elections to the voters at large. That amendment also conferred on state legislatures power to authorize the governor to make temporary appointments.
The Supreme Court has held that another grant to each state “Legislature” (I-4-1) actually is a grant to the broader legislative authority rather than merely to the state’s representative assembly alone. The Times, Places and Manner clause allows each state to regulate the “Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.” Because the grant is to the general legislative authority rather than to elected assembly, the governor can veto such regulations, and the people can make them through the initiative process or approve or reject them through referendum, if the state constitution so provides.
The Constitution further bestowed on state legislatures a veto over congressional acquisitions under the Enclave Clause (I-8-17) and over proposed state divisions and combinations (IV-3-1).
Article II, Section 1 empowers “Each State” to choose the method of selecting presidential electors from that state. The same section, coupled with the Twelfth Amendment, authorizes the electors to choose the President. Again, both powers derive from the Constitution, not from those retained under the Tenth Amendment.
The Guarantee Clause (Article IV, Section 4) grants state legislatures the legal capacity to compel the federal government to protect them against “domestic Violence,” and it gives like capacity to state governors when the legislature cannot be convened.
Article V, which governs the amendment process, grants power to four kinds of assemblies: Congress, state legislatures, state conventions, and a federal convention to propose amendments. The courts tell us that in Article V matters, these assemblies act independently, and not as branches of any government.
Article VI empowers, and directs, state judges to apply the Constitution as the “Supreme Law of the Land.”
When an entity outside the government exercises authority conferred by the Constitution, the Supreme Court says it exercises a “federal function.” However, the Court also has made clear that exercising a federal function does not convert an independent entity into a part of the U.S. government.
One interesting implication of these grants, as I noted in an earlier posting, is that they fall outside the incidental federal legislative power defined in the Necessary and Proper Clause. This is because the Necessary and Proper Clause generally excludes laws not directed to the federal government or to “Departments” and “Officers” of that government.
Apparently in recognition of this, the framers provided for several compensating grants to the federal legislature (i.e., Congress-subject-to-presidential-veto). The Times, Places and Manner Clause permits Congress to regulate, to a certain extent, a governor’s writ of election and to overrule most state regulations of congressional elections. (I-4-1). Moreover, even though states are primarily responsible for selecting presidential electors, Congress may dictate “the time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes.” (II-1-4). And in the amendment process, Congress calls the convention and chooses among two modes of ratification.
Rob Natelson is a long-time conservative/free market activist, but professionally he is a constitutional scholar whose meticulous studies of the Constitution’s original meaning have been repeatedly cited in U.S. Supreme Court opinions and published or cited by many top law journals (See:www.constitution.i2i.org/about/) He co-authored The Origins of the Necessary and Proper Clause (Cambridge University Press) and The Original Constitution (Tenth Amendment Center). He was a law professor for 25 years and taught constitutional law and related courses. He is the Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at Colorado’s Independence Institute.
