[Senate Hearing 110-440] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 110-440 ENDING TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION: THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF S. 1257 ======================================================================= HEARING before the COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ MAY 23, 2007 __________ Serial No. J-110-38 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 43-232 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------- For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866)512-1800 DC area (202)512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont, Chairman EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah HERB KOHL, Wisconsin CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California JON KYL, Arizona RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN CORNYN, Texas BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island TOM COBURN, Oklahoma Bruce A. Cohen, Chief Counsel and Staff Director Michael O'Neill, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director C O N T E N T S ---------- STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS Page Feingold, Hon. Russell D., a U.S. Senator from the State of Wisconsin...................................................... 1 Hatch, Hon. Orrin G., a U.S. Senator from the State of Utah...... 7 Kennedy, Hon. Edward M., a U.S. Senator from the State of Massachusetts, prepared statement.............................. 134 Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont. 3 prepared statement........................................... 135 WITNESSES Bress, Richard P., Partner, Latham & Watkins, LLP, Washington, D.C............................................................ 29 Cannon, Hon. Chris, a Representative in Congress from the State of Utah........................................................ 4 Elwood, John P., Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.......... 16 Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Delegate in Congress from the District of Columbia........................................... 8 Ogletree, Charles J., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts........................... 25 Shurtleff, Mark L., Utah Attorney General, Salt Lake City, Utah.. 13 Thomas, Kenneth R., Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C............................................................ 27 Turley, Jonathan, Professor, George Washington University Law School, Washington, D.C........................................ 23 Wald, Patricia, former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Washington, D.C.................. 18 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Responses of Richard P. Bress to questions submitted by Senators Feingold, Coburn............................................... 42 Responses of John P. Elwood to questions submitted by Senator Coburn......................................................... 58 Responses of Kenneth Thomas to questions submitted by Senator Coburn......................................................... 66 Responses of Jonathan Turley to questions submitted by Senator Coburn......................................................... 72 Responses of Patricia Wald to questions submitted by Senator Coburn......................................................... 84 Questions submitted to Charles Ogletree by Senators Coburn and Feingold (Note: At the time of printing, after several attempts to obtain responses to the written questions, the Committee had not received any communication from the witness.).............. 86 SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD Bress, Richard P., Partner, Latham & Watkins, LLP, Washington, D.C., statement................................................ 88 Cannon, Hon. Chris, a Representative in Congress from the State of Utah, statement............................................. 115 DC for Democracy, Keshini Laduwahetty, Chair, Karen D. Rose, Chair, Committee on Democracy & Voting Rights, DC for Democracy and James H. Dean, Chair, Democracy for America, Washington, D.C., letter................................................... 124 Democracy for Utah, Carrie Ulrich, President and Kristine Griggs, Vice President, letter......................................... 125 Elwood, John P., Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., statement...................................................... 127 Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Delegate in Congress from the District of Columbia........................................... 143 Ogletree, Charles J., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, statement................ 147 Shurtleff, Mark L., Utah Attorney General, Salt Lake City, Utah, statement...................................................... 152 Stand Up! for Democracy in DC Coalition, Washington, D.C., statement...................................................... 159 Strauss, Paul, a U.S. Senator from the District of Columbia (Shadow), statement............................................ 164 Thomas, Kenneth R., Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., statement................................................ 175 Turley, Jonathan, Professor, George Washington University Law School, Washington, D.C., statement............................ 184 Wald, Patricia, former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Washington, D.C., statement...... 251 Washingtonpost.com, Mary Beth Sheridan, May 28, 2007, article.... 261 ENDING TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION: THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF S. 1257 ---------- WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2007 U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C. The Committee met, Pursuant to notice, at 1:32 p.m., in room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Russell D. Feingold, presiding. Present: Senators Leahy and Hatch. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN Senator Feingold. I call the committee to order. Good afternoon, everybody. We will start the hearing and go as far as we can, then there are going to be two or three votes, so we will recess the committee and come back as soon as I can at that point. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Two hundred and twenty years ago this September, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, our Nation's Founders adopted the Constitution of the United States. We are here today to consider whether that document, perhaps the greatest testament to democracy and freedom in human history, prevents the elected legislature of the people of this country from granting the most basic right of citizenship to the people of the District of Columbia. While I understand the textual and historical arguments made by those who believe that right can only be granted through a constitutional amendment, I simply cannot agree that our historic charter compelled that result. We are fortunate to have with us today distinguished experts on constitutional law to give this committee a full airing of the issues raised by S. 1257, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007. We look forward to their testimony. The bill would increase the size of the House of Representatives by two seats, granting one of those seats to the District of Columbia and the other to Utah, which fell just 857 people short of picking up a fourth seat in the reapportionment that took place after the 2000 Census. A number of hearings have been held on the bill over the past few years, including just last week in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is the committee of jurisdiction in the Senate. Senator Leahy and I decided to hold this hearing because we believe that it is important for the Senate Judiciary Committee to carefully consider the primary argument raised by the opponents of S. 1257, that the bill is unconstitutional. The two sides of this constitutional debate are well-known. Proponents of the bill believe that the District clause of Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to grant a vote in the House to residents in the District of Columbia, while opponents believe that doing so would violate what is sometimes referred to as the ``Composition Clause'' of Article I, Section 2, which provides that the House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen by ``the people of the several States.'' Proponents note that the courts have interpreted the District clause quite broadly and have upheld congressional enactments that treat the District as a State and its citizens like citizens of States for various purposes. Opponents argue that the plain language of the Constitution in this context leaves no doubt that the Framers meant what they said when they said that only people living in ``States'' could be represented in Congress. This is obviously not an easy question of constitutional interpretation. There is no slam dunk here, but the answer is of enormous consequence. Over half a million people in the city where we now sit are currently unrepresented in Congress. They pay taxes at the second-highest rate per capita of any State in the Nation. They and their sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, defend our country in war. The decisions of their local elected representatives are subject to a congressional veto, and they live in the capital city of the greatest democracy in the world. Yet, they have not even one voting representative in even one House of the legislature that governs them. In some ways, it is as if the American Revolution passed them by. That is a fundamental injustice. We in Congress have a duty to correct that injustice, and now we have a chance to do so because a political ``perfect storm'' seems to be upon us, allowing partisan concerns to take a backseat, as they should, to granting fundamental rights and fulfilling the promise of democracy for the residents of the District of Columbia. No person will be hurt, no group will be disadvantaged if we pass this bill. But hundreds of thousands of people will continue to be disadvantaged if we fail to act, simply because they live in the Nation's Capital. In my view, in light of the historic wrong that this bill will correct, the case for its constitutionality is certainly strong enough to justify enacting it and asking the Supreme Court to make the final decision. The Constitution grants Congress the power of ``exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever'' over the District. It seems odd that we cannot use that authority to ensure that this government's just powers are derived from the consent of the governed. The other fundamental document of our founding, the Declaration of Independence, laid out a list of grievances against the King of Great Britain, including the following: ``He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.'' Those who rely on constitutional arguments to oppose this bill should ask themselves not only what the Framers thought at the time, but what they would think today if they were faced with the question of whether their handiwork should be used to prevent Congress from granting over half a million people the most basic right in a democracy, the right of representation in the legislature, a ``right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.'' I think the answer to that question is obvious. Now let me turn to the Chairman of the full committee, my friend Senator Leahy. STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF VERMONT Chairman Leahy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you holding this hearing, and I am proud to be a co-sponsor with you of this legislation. As many people know, I have taken this position consistently all the years I have been in the Senate. The District of Columbia and the State of Vermont have roughly the same, within 10 percent, population. I think last year, if you will remember, Mr. Chairman, we were sitting here and we were having hearings on the Voting Rights Act. We came together, Republicans and Democrats, and we passed that, something of the extension so that we could make sure that the fundamental right to vote of all Americans was protected. I wrote a letter to my four grandchildren at the time and told them this was a gift to them, that all four will have their rights protected when they are old enough to vote. The DC Voting Rights bill, I think, falls in that same category. It was glad to see Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is a friend of longstanding. She has testified here before. It is interesting. As a young lawyer, she worked for civil rights and voting rights around the country. She then comes home. You helped get a lot of people the right to vote. Unfortunately, you could not vote yourself, even though you are such a strong voice in the District. I see another friend, retired Chief Judge Patricia Wald, in the audience. In her thoughtful testimony she highlights the fact that Congress has a greater power to confer Statehood, and the District certainly contains a lesser one: the power to grant District residents voting rights in the House. Congress exercised that authority in the past without rigid adherence to constitutional text. We granted voting rights to Americans abroad. They are able to vote in their last stated residence, regardless of whether they are citizens of that State, are now paying taxes in that State, or even have an intent to return to the State. Congress has repeatedly used the District of Columbia as a State for other purposes. In the Judiciary Act of 1789, it made clear that Federal courts may hear cases between citizens of different States, and included the District for that. We have allowed the District to be treated as a State for purposes of congressional power in regulating commerce. The Sixteenth Amendment grants Congress the power to directly tax incomes without apportionment among the several States, but includes, of course, the District. In 2005, President Bush praised the Iraqi people for exercising their democratic right to vote and said that by participating in free elections the Iraqi people firmly rejected the anti-democratic ideology of the terrorists. They demonstrated the kind of courage that is always the foundation of sound government. Now, the President spends a fair amount of time here in Washington, DC. I wish he would speak just as enthusiastically about the people who live here. The United States is the only democracy in the world that denies a portion of its citizens full representation, the only democracy in the world. The administration contends we lack authority for this. Well, the purpose of the District clause in the Constitution was to ensure Federal authority over the Nation's Capital, not to deprive citizens living there their rights of citizenship. The founders established a Republican form of government. That system has been perfected for more than 200 years. I find disappointing the administration's threat to veto this legislation. Sometimes I think they only read Article II that establishes the exclusive and all-encompassing power of the government and the President. I am glad that they at least acknowledged it in Article I when it comes to the District clause. So I have a much longer statement and I will put it in the record. There are certain things where the time has come. Just like the voting rights extension, the time has come for this, too. [The prepared statement of Chairman Leahy appears as a submission for the record.] Senator Feingold. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership of the committee, and in particular your long-time commitment to this issue. Thank you for helping us open up the hearing. We will now turn to our first panel, but before we proceed further I understand that Mr. Paul Strauss, who is the elected shadow Senator for the District of Columbia, is with us today. Senator Strauss, if you can stand and be recognized at this time. Thank you very much for being here. Now to our panel. Our first witness is Representative Chris Cannon. He has represented the Third District of Utah in the House since 1997. He is currently the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law of the House Judiciary Committee. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Brigham Young University. Mr. Cannon, thank you for joining us today. You may proceed. STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS CANNON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF UTAH Representative Cannon. Thank you, Mr. Feingold. I apologize, Mr. Chairman, for being late here. We had a vote on this side. If it is agreeable, we also have an ongoing hearing with Ms. Goodling on the Senate side, which is part of the subject matter of the subcommittee that I rank on over there. So if it is acceptable, I would like to be able to slip out after my testimony. Thank you for inviting me to speak today about the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007. I strongly support this legislation because it would correct two injustices. It would provide a long-overdue voting representative for residents of the District of Columbia and would restore adequate representation for residents of the State of Utah. I appreciate that some have questioned whether providing District residents the fundamental right to vote is within Congress's power, but I do not share their doubts. There is no historical basis for concluding that the framers intended to disenfranchise residents of the Nation's Capital. In my view, the District clause of the Constitution gives Congress the necessary authority to restore voting rights to those residents. Although the crux of the debate regarding this legislation focuses on the D.C. portion of the bill, let me, first, speak about the Utah portion. Utah is in the unique position to remedy a wrong imposed on it after the 2000 census. Utah lost out on the fourth seat because of a Census Bureau decision to count, and enumerate to their respective homes, States' government employees residing temporarily abroad, but not to count similarly situated missionaries. Had the Bureau either not counted any Americans residing temporarily abroad or counted all such Americans and not just those employed by the Federal Government, Utah would have been awarded a fourth seat after the 2000 Census. This legislation puts Utah on a path to remedy a fraud decision, although I have some questions about the language in the House legislation that mandated an at-Large seat for Utah. I want to be clear that those concerns were not regarding the constitutionality of an at-Large seat, but rather its effects on the State's prerogatives and the historic role of the State in the apportionment. I appreciate the deference the Senate bill has shown the State of Utah and look forward to working with you as this language of the legislation moves forward. In order to understand that the District portion of this legislation, it is important to take a historical perspective. At the time of our Nation's founding, the Framers provided for a Federal District to house the seat of the Federal Government. This was done to ensure that the Nation's Capital would be insulated from undue influence from the States and that its security would be not left in the hands of any one State. Denying District of Columbia residents the right in vote in elections for the House of Representatives was not necessary, or even relevant, to further these purposes. And contrary to the claims of some, there is no indication in the ratification debates that the Framers intended such disenfranchisement. In fact, there was no discussion at all during the constitutional convention, and almost none in the State ratification debates as to the voting rights of the new District residents, likely because it was assumed that the States donating the land for the District would provide for the voting rights of the residents of the ceded land. Indeed, from 1790 to 1800, District residents continued to vote in congressional elections in Maryland and Virginia. It was not until 1800 when the District became subject to complete Federal control that the residents of the District lost their voting rights. The Framer's idea which focused closely on this issue may well have stemmed from the fact that there was no District of Columbia at the time the Constitution was ratified. At that time, the Framers had prescribed only the District's purpose and the limitations on its geographic size. Even if location had not been selected, many municipalities, including Trenton, New Jersey, Yorktown, Virginia, and Reading, Pennsylvania vied for the honor. It was not until Congress passed the Residence Act that the site that is now the District of Columbia was selected as the seat of the Federal Government. For all the Framers knew, the Capital would be located in the middle of an existing State, thereby allowing the residents of the District to continuing voting in that State, as residents of Federal enclaves do today. Although they did not perceive a need explicitly to protect District residents' voting rights, the Framers did authorize Congress to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over the District. As several constitutional scholars have observed, Congress has used its power under this clause numerous times to treat the residents of the District as though they were residents of a State, and that has been true even in instances where the Constitution gives rights or imposes responsibilities only on citizens of States. Opponents of this legislation argue, however, that the Framers meant to exclude District residents from voting by providing, in Article I, Section 2, that Members of the House are chosen by the people of the several States. But that language was not chosen because of an intention to deny democracy to residents of the Nation's Capital. Rather, the ratification debates indicate that this language resulted from two decisions made in the course of those debates: the decision that the House would be elected by the people of the several States as opposed to by State legislatures, and the decision to allow voting qualifications to be set by the State rather than at the Federal level. At no point during the debates over these issues did anyone mention the residents of the newly conceived Federal District, let alone suggest that they would be deprived of the fundamental individual right to voting for representation. In short, there is no historical basis for reading into the clause a limitation that would prevent Congress from ensuring adequate representation for all of the Nation's citizens. This act ensures adequate representation both in Utah and in the District of Columbia, and it does so constitutionally. I, therefore, urge you to join me in supporting it. Senator Feingold. Thank you very much, Representative. I see my colleague, a former Chairman of the committee and distinguished Senator from Utah, Senator Hatch, is here, and I turn to him now. STATEMENT OF HON. ORRIN G. HATCH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF UTAH Senator Hatch. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and Chairman Leahy for scheduling this hearing so promptly, and for you chairing this hearing today. You are both co-sponsors of S. 1257, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007. I also want to thank Senator Lieberman, who chairs the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, who introduced the bill and held a hearing on this less than 2 weeks ago. I am happy to welcome my colleagues from Utah. I am really pleased to have you here, and my dear friend, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who I have great regard for in addition. Mr. Chairman, S. 1257 would correct two injustices by giving to Utah the additional House seat that many in my State believe we deserve following the 2000 Census, and giving the half-million Americans living in the District of Columbia full House representation. Unlike the House version, S. 1257 correctly defers to Utah's choice as to how to provide for a fourth House Member. This avoids potential constitutional difficulties on the Utah side of the equation. On the District of Columbia side, America's founders might not have foreseen the District becoming the major population center that it is today. But while they did not affirmatively provide in the Constitution for District representation, I do not believe that they negatively denied Congress the power to do so. On numerous occasions, the Supreme Court has approved Congress's application to the District of ``duties or privileges normally reserved for States.'' These include the application of direct taxes, court jurisdiction and diversity cases--Federal court jurisdiction, if you will--and regulation of commerce. In each of these, and other instances, the Court has not viewed the word ``States'' so narrowly as to trump Congress's explicit and exclusive power to legislate for the District. I do not believe that we should do so here. I want to emphasize what I said before the Homeland Security Committee: this bill should not be seen as a step toward either Statehood or Senate representation for the District of Columbia. America's founders wisely concluded that the Nation's Capital should not be one of its constituent States. James Madison said that this was ``an indispensable necessity, and while the House represents people, the Senate represents States which have equal suffrage in that body.'' Now, I believe the Senate represents people, too, but one of the most important things here, and pivotal things, to me, is that only States have equal rights of suffrage in the U.S. Senate. Now, as such, the District population supports House representation. Its status as a District does not justify Senate representation, and I would not support changing that or granting that. I acknowledge, as Judge Wald put it in her prepared statement, this is a ``close and difficult constitutional question.'' There are legitimate arguments on both sides. I must note that there are both liberal and conservative legal experts on both sides. That said, the commitment of America's Founders to a representative government, their grant of complete authority over the District of Columbia to Congress, their failure to prohibit District representation in the House, and both congressional and judicial precedent combine to satisfy me that S. 1257 rests on sufficiently firm constitutional ground. Now, Mr. Chairman, the distinguished witnesses before us represent different views and perspectives which are well suited to the question before us, whether or not S. 1257 is constitutional. I am pleased to see here today the congressional Representatives of both Utah and the District, Representative Chris Cannon and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, as well as our own Utah Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff, on the first panel. I have respect for each one of you. And on the second panel, we have a mixture of views, with lawyers and law professors, a former Chief appeals court judge, as well as representatives from the Congressional Research Service and the Department of Justice. Now, this is an able and learned group of witnesses. I know most all of them, and we will all benefit from their testimony. I particularly look forward to it and the interchange that we might have. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is all I need to say at this point. Senator Feingold. Thank you, Senator Hatch. Representative Cannon. Mr. Chairman? Senator Feingold. Yes, Representative Cannon? Representative Cannon. Would you excuse me from the hearing? If there are some questions I would be happy to answer them, but we do have this hearing ongoing on the House side. Senator Feingold. Absolutely. Thank you for attending. Representative Cannon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Feingold. Now I am especially pleased to introduce our next witness. Eleanor Holmes Norton is the Delegate for the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives. She has served in this capacity since 1991. Prior to her election, she was a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where she still teaches today on an adjunct basis. She graduated from Antioch College and Yale Law School. Mrs. Norton, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to the Judiciary Committee, and the floor is yours. STATEMENT OF HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, A DELEGATE IN CONGRESS FROM THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Delegate Norton. I appreciate the opportunity to testify here today. I especially appreciate the very thoughtful opening statements that each of you have made, you, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Leahy, and of course, Senator Hatch, my good friend for a long time. I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words about what I think can rightfully be called the Voting Rights Act of 2007. The Senate and the House having just passed the Voting Rights Act of 2006, I think you will understand that I have not simply stolen a title in order to elevate our bill when you hear my testimony. You, Mr. Chairman, and Senator Lieberman deserve special thanks from the District of Columbia because you were the original sponsors of my No Taxation Without Representation Act. I thank you now, also, for your leadership, for the leadership of all three of you, on S. 1257, the bill, as Senator Hatch says, for a House seat only. That is all that the residents of the District of Columbia are here seeking. I want to speak briefly from notes and ask that my full testimony be admitted into the record. Senator Feingold. Without objection. [The prepared statement of Delegate Norton appears as a submission for the record.] Delegate Norton. Mr. Chairman, there are too many responsible for this bill to name, and I won't try to do so. I am enormously grateful to my old friend, Senator Orrin Hatch, the senior citizen--senior Senator-- [Laughter.] Chairman Leahy. You were right the first time. [Laughter.] Senator Hatch. You got it right the first time. I feel that way right now. [Laughter.] Delegate Norton. In that case, Senator, you have plenty of company in this room. [Laughter.] Delegate Norton. From Utah, and Senator Bob Bennett, who are lead sponsors of this bill. I want to thank Senator Hatch for his very compelling and principled testimony almost 2 weeks ago. I want to thank Governor John Huntsman, who testified in the House for the bill. I am very pleased to see the distinguished Attorney General has come to the Senate today, and I am very grateful to the entire Utah delegation. You just heard from one of the unanimous Utah delegation who have worked literally side-by-side with us every step of the way. I have to mention a special thanks to my co-author and lead sponsor, Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, who observed the precedents of the House and the Senate, that when there is bipartisanship you can enhance representation in Congress, and has worked closely with me and with the civil rights leadership because he saw no justification whatsoever for denying taxpaying residents of the District of Columbia a vote in their own House of Representatives. Tom's bipartisanship, which began this bill, is epitomized by the votes in the House. And I do want the Senate to know that three committees voted, by large majorities, for this bill. One of those large majorities occurred in the Republican House, and this bill almost got to the floor in the 109th Congress. Two of the large votes occurred this year. This bipartisanship is especially epitomized by two conservative scholars who have led the constitutional work on the committee. Professor Viet Din has testified three times. As you may know, he served as the constitutional point man in the Ashcroft Justice Department, and Judge Kenneth Starr also testified in the House for this bill. I am very appreciative of the scholars who have come forward for this bill at this time. I see Mr. Turley is here once again. He cannot get enough of this bill. Mr. Turley is my good friend. He and I belong to the same fraternity, as it were; he and I both are tenured law professors. But that is where the resemblance ends. [Laughter.] Delegate Norton. I have been able to do nothing with Mr. Turley, although he does inform me that I have converted his mother. That is good enough for me. [Laughter.] Delegate Norton. I see that the apple has fallen very far from the tree. [Laughter.] Delegate Norton. I have only three points to make, Mr. Chairman, and they are all points of principle on which S. 1257 is rooted. One is the principle of comity or deference to the House, the only House that is implicated, and comity and deference to the State of Utah, the only State that is implicated. The second principle is respect for the mandate and trust which the Framers left with the Congress of the United States to assure that the voters of the new Capital would have a vote. The third principle, Mr. Chairman, is equal representation under law, regardless of race or color, which S. 1257 inevitably carries, cutting loose from the racial moorings and roots that for more than 150 years denied all rights--all rights of all kinds--to the citizens of the Nation's Capital. First, comity, deference, and respect for the House. The bill has no effect on the Senate. From its genesis, it was a request only for the House vote. The House labored long and hard. It required exact political equivalence of both jurisdictions. We have a bicameral legislature. So, Mr. Chairman, you of the Senate have an equal say on whether we of the House of Representatives can add two House seats, seats for Utah and for the District of Columbia. I ask you to respect the will of the House, and I ask you to respect and give deference to the State of Utah. I believe Utah is the most Republican State in the Union. I know that the District of Columbia is regarded as a Democratic jurisdiction. Senator Hatch personally came to testify and he not only spoke for Utah, for his State, as you might expect, but he spoke as a constitutional expert who has chaired this committee and he spoke about the rights as well for the residents of the District of Columbia. I just want to say again, Senator Hatch, how much your testimony meant to me personally and to the residents of the District of Columbia. I want to say as well that Utah is no mere Alaska and Hawaii, District of Columbia matching here. You are going to hear straight from the Attorney General about how Utah lost by a few hundred votes its chance for a House seat. I think you should know--perhaps the Attorney General will tell you--that 1,100 young people who feel that it is their religious mission to carry the gospel of their church around the world, were temporarily absent, on a religious mission from their State, and that the State of Utah felt so deeply about being denied a vote, that they took this matter to the Supreme Court of the United States and almost won, 5:4. So they bring a kind of zeal to the table that we, the residents of the District of Columbia, bring. Governor John Huntsman, when he testified in the House--and I will quote a sentence from him--``the people of Utah have expressed outrage over the loss of one constitutional seat for the last 6 years. I share their outrage. I can't imagine what it must be like for American citizens to have no representation at all for over 200 years.'' Second, I ask you to respect and honor the will of the Framers, who fully expected that Congress would grant the vote when the District came under congressional jurisdiction. It is absurd, Mr. Chairman, and I believe slanderous, to conclude that the Framers who we so revere would fight a revolution, with all of the risks that it took, on one issue, the issue of representation, and then would turn around and deny representation to the residents of their own Capital. If you think there is not to be representation, find yourself another source. I do not believe that it is fair to derive that conclusion from our own Framers. You will hear more detailed testimony about this, that in fact the District is not a State. I can't help but mention something about that, Mr. Chairman, because the Congress has not had the slightest difficulty in treating the District as a State, with its laws, its treaties, and for constitutional purposes. There are many, many examples. But you must know what my favorite one is: the Sixteenth Amendment. That, in its terms, says that the States, the citizens of the States, shall pay Federal income taxes. It does not mention the District of Columbia. Not withstanding that, the citizens of the District of Columbia gave to their Government, on April 15 and before, $4 billion to support their Government. I ask you to remember that the land that was contributed came from six men who signed the Constitution, three from Maryland and three from Virginia, that on this land, which was populated--this was not a bare piece of land, this was fairly well populated, in fact, including veterans of the Revolutionary War. These veterans and other citizens voted for the 10 years of transition until Congress took full control, and indeed the first Congress promised that Congress itself would carry out the mandate of the Framers to make sure that the residents of Maryland and Virginia living on that land were left whole. It falls to the 110th Congress, Mr. Chairman, to fulfill this promise after 206 years. I do want to make clear my view, that I believe that the Framers would never have asked Maryland, Virginia, or the other Framers to contribute land, or whether or not contributing land, to deny representation to their own citizens in the process. Third, and finally, Mr. Chairman, S. 1257 removes the racial scar that refuses to heal until the racial underpinnings of the denial of the vote and of democracy to the citizens of the District of Columbia is removed. You here in the Congress have done exactly this in the Voting Rights Act of 2006, reauthorized last year. I, of course, believe this is indeed, and will always be, remembered as the Voting Rights Act of 2007. Congress is responsible for the racial basis of our bill, just as responsible as the Southern States were responsible for the underpinnings of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We had no majority Black population here until the late 1950s, but many African-Americans came to the District of Columbia, surrounded by the southern States, especially Maryland and Virginia. My great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, was one of those Black men, a runaway slave from Virginia who came here in the 1850s. It was the District's large African-American population that was responsible for the denial of home rule and for voting rights for White and Black citizens alike. As one southern Senator put it, and I am quoting him, ``The Negroes flocked in and there was only one way out, and that was to deny suffrage entirely to every human being in the District.'' It is significant that the segregation in the District of Columbia was affirmatively mandated by the Congress of the United States. I ask you to remember that the District of Columbia was one of five Brown v. Board of Education cases. On May 17, 1954, I was sitting in a segregated classroom in Dunbar High School when Charles Lawson, the principal, sounded the bell of the intercom system to say that the Supreme Court of the United States had just declared segregated classrooms, like the ones in which we were then seated, unconstitutional. All public accommodations in this city were segregated by the Congress. Only the buses and streetcars did not carry segregation. There was no mayor, no city council, no self- government, no democracy until the civil rights movement forced the issue. The District's home rule and voting rights have been high on the agenda of the NAACP ever since it was created, and of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights since its founding. The civil rights leadership themselves wrote to the House concerning this bill. Julian Barn, Dorothy Height, Mark Morial, Wade Henderson wrote, and I am going to quote a word from what they wrote because it says from their own struggle why the District is where it is today. I quote these four civil rights leaders: ``The District of Columbia achieved a constitutional delegate and partial self- government only after its citizens were aided by the civil rights movement, including many of our organizations who finally made the total absence of congressional representation and self-government in the Nation's Capital a matter of national importance. In light of the long history of federally enforced segregation in the Nation's Capital until recent decades and its majority African-American population, the continued disenfranchisement of District residents, particularly in the House of Representatives, cannot be explained or tolerated in today's world.'' The Voting Rights Act, when it was pending last year, occasioned a letter from the first African-American popularly elected Senator in the United States, Senator Ed Brook. And I note that this native Washingtonian has already received from the Senate the requisite number of votes to get the highest constitutional medal, the so-called Congressional Medal; we are gathering signatures in the Senate. But he wrote to Members of the House and the Senate in this way: ``The experience of living in a segregated city and of serving in our segregated Armed Forces perhaps explains why my parties worked on the Voting Rights Act reauthorization last year. The pending DC House Voting Rights Act has been so important to me personally. The irony, of course, is that I had to leave my hometown to get representation in the Congress and to become a Member.'' There is no escaping, finally, Mr. Chairman, that Congress's responsibility for the racially segregated Capital for 150 years, for the denial of self-government to Whites and Blacks alike because of the significant numbers of African- Americans, that taint is so deep and will remain as long as the residents of this city are treated as second-class citizens. I am a third-generation Washingtonian. I trace my own heritage back to a slave couple in Virginia in the early 19th century. My great-grandfather came here as a slave seeking freedom, not the vote. He was emancipated 9 months before the Emancipation Proclamation because Lincoln emancipated the slaves in the District of Columbia 9 months early. He lived to see his son, Richard, join the DC Fire Department in 1902. I have had the high honor to represent citizens of my hometown for 17 years. They seek no honor. They do think the case has been made long ago for full representation, and that the case is closed today as District residents today are on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting for their own country and for the rights of the Iraqis. I ask that you give the residents of your Capital the honor of a vote in the House of Representatives for the first time in 206 years. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Feingold. Thank you so much, Mrs. Norton, for your important, interesting, and moving testimony. I greatly enjoyed listening to it. Our final witness on this panel is Mark L. Shurtleff. He was reelected as Utah attorney general in 2004, and is now serving his second term. Previously, Attorney General Shurtleff served as an officer and attorney in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General Corps. We appreciate your making the trip to join us today, and you may proceed, sir. STATEMENT OF HON. MARK L. SHURTLEFF, UTAH ATTORNEY GENERAL, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH Mr. Shurtleff. Thank you, Senator, Senator Hatch. Thank you very much for the invitation to be here today. It is a great honor to have a chance to say something. When I was first asked to come here and comment I said, well, you have got Senator Hatch, a constitutional scholar, you have got Representative Cannon coming, he is a lawyer. Why do you need three lawyers from Utah to come and make a point? I tried to understand why, or what I might possibly add. I hope that I am not repetitive of what has been said, and I would ask that you include my entire written statement in the record. Senator Feingold. Without objection. [The prepared statement of Attorney General Shurtleff appears as a submission for the record.] Mr. Shurtleff. I will maybe just highlight a couple of things. But what really struck me, I guess, today, is that as Attorney General Linda Singer, the attorney general of the District of Columbia, and I have worked together to present our comments and to write letters to the White House and to Congress, coming together and forging an unusual alliance between our State and the District of Columbia for a common good, and as Representative Norton was talking, it occurred to me, as a Dredd Scott biographer, that 150 years ago, you probably know, just a few hundred yards from here in the old Supreme Court room below your Senate chambers, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court took a look at the Declaration of Independence, that self evident truth that all men are created equal, and he looked at a Black man and said, because of the color of your skin and because of your race, you are not a man, you are not protected by that great statement at the start of this Nation that made us what we are, and that you have no rights that any White man would ever have to respect. There was a great Civil War. In 100 years' worth of civil rights, we have come a long way. I am not going on record necessarily as saying this is a race issue, but I am saying that it is an equality issue, it is a justice issue. The very foundation of this Nation, in that preamble to the Constitution, said the first thing we do in forming a more perfect union is to establish justice. As you know all too well, justice means equality, equal access, equal opportunity to everybody, and ultimately everybody, regardless of race. Yet, we still have this problem here for 200 years, where equality and equal representation is a myth. I want it understood that I am in a different position as attorney general. I am a member of the executive branch. My job is not to make the laws; you get to do that. My job is to enforce the laws made in my State, to execute the laws, and to defend in court those laws which you passed. Even though we feel very strongly, and one of the first things I did as attorney general when I came into office in 2001, was to sue the Federal Government, the Census Bureau, over this issue regarding representation. I still smart over that. I believe that, for 6 years, Utah has been the least- represented State in the Nation. We argued very strongly that under-representation is no representation. As Governor Huntsman said, as quoted by Representative Norton, I cannot imagine what it would be like to have no representation for over 200 years. So it is my responsibility to defend and enforce the law. I will not, and I know that nobody here would be here, in a self-serving purpose. I know that it seems like we could all say Utah and DC, we are all in it for something. I would not be here testifying, and I know that this bill would not be before Congress if it was just that, if all those who supported it, who were the sponsors of it, did not believe it was constitutional. That ultimately is my responsibility. I will not support a law that I do not believe is constitutional and can be upheld in the courts, so that is what it boils down to. What I and Attorney General Singer felt like was important for you to hear from the executive branch, from law enforcement officers, of our belief, based on a huge amount of study and a great number of scholars that you will hear from later, that it is, in fact, constitutional. If I may just hit a few of those points as far as constitutionality are concerned. I will just add that the intent of the District clause was to ensure Federal authority over the Nation's Capital, not to deprive its citizens living there of their rights of citizenship. We all know it is very easy to read a few words in the Constitution. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who will look at that and say, it is there, it is in writing, it is not a State, therefore you cannot have representation. But it is so important to go into legislative intent, and the history and meaning, and how can there be anything more fundamental to our Nation and to our representative republican form of government than equal representation? Second, there is evidence that the Framers assumed that the ceding States would ensure that their citizens' liberty interests were protected. We quote Madison in our comments: ``Third, when the Framers wanted to restrict voting representation in the Constitution they did so affirmatively, as in Article I, Section 2, where for apportionment purposes, slaves and taxpaying Indians were counted as three-fifths person.'' If the Framers wanted the District's citizens to have even less representation than that--meaning none at all--they surely would have included a provision to that effect. Finally, at least one Framer, Alexander Hamilton, did want to include an affirmative provision for voting representation by District citizens to require that representation. There appears to be no congressional historical documentation as to why this amendment did not pass, but the circumstantial record indicates that it was because the Framers believed it was not needed since the District of Columbia citizens could continue to vote with the ceding States at that time, Maryland and Virginia, which they all did for, as we know, 10 years after the District's creation in 1791, either that or because Congress could act to provide representation under the District clause. In sum, what Congress taketh away, Congress can give back. I would, again, urge at this time, when our Nation seems so split on partisan lines, when there is so much taking our attention, that at this time we can come together as Americans, in the bipartisan nature of this bill, of these bills, to do what is right, to do what is American, to do what is just. We have tried to demonstrate that in Utah in creating a fourth seat in our Senate. In fact, our Senate Majority Leader, Kurt Bramble, is here today. He chaired the committee on redistricting, drawing up a proposed fourth seat. It was not drawn to just ensure Republican, it was one that was fair and bipartisan. All the Democrats in our State Senate voted for that proposal. I think there was plenty of evidence that we are doing this together. Finally, some people say, it is just the District of Columbia and Utah. Why should the Nation come together on this? I think that we must again return to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, writing from a Birmingham jail, ``Injustice anywhere,'' injustice in DC, I would say, ``is a threat to justice everywhere.'' Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Feingold. Thank you so much, Mr. Attorney General. Unless Senator Hatch has an additional comment, I want to thank the witnesses very much. Senator Hatch. I would just like to say, Mr. Chairman, how much I have appreciated both of you coming and testifying. Eleanor, you have been a wonderful leader here. I just want to pay total respect to you. I really enjoyed your statement and the passion that you have for this. I have an equal passion for it. I really believe that this is the right thing to do, and I intend to help you every step of the way if we can. Let us hope we can get enough people of good will to be able to do this. Thank you. Thank you, both. Senator Feingold. Thank you, Senator Hatch. Thanks so much. I would ask the second panel to take their seats. I do not know when the votes are going to start, but we will try to proceed. I would ask the witnesses to please stand to be sworn. [Whereupon, the witnesses were duly sworn.] Senator Feingold. I thank the witnesses. We will proceed in order, proceeding from left to right. I would ask each of you to try to limit your oral presentation to 5 minutes so we can have ample time for questions and debate. Of course, we will include your full statements in the record. Our first witness on this panel is John P. Elwood. Mr. Elwood is a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel for the Department of Justice. He previously served as the Department's Assistant to the Solicitor General, as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, and as an attorney in the Criminal Appellate Section. Mr. Elwood, thank you for joining us today. You may proceed. STATEMENT OF JOHN P. ELWOOD, DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, D.C. Mr. Elwood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee for the opportunity to appear today to discuss the constitutionality of S. 1257, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007. The administration strongly opposes this legislation, not on grounds of policy, but on grounds of constitutionality. For at least 40 years, the Justice Department has maintained, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the residents of the District of Columbia cannot, constitutionally, be given voting representation in Congress by simple legislation. Our position is dictated by the clear language of the District, the understanding of the Framers, and the consistent view of both Congress and the executive branch. Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that ``the House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature.'' Eleven other constitutional provisions likewise explicitly tie voting for Congress and the President to Statehood. The Framers and their contemporaries clearly understood that the Constitution barred congressional representation for District residents, beginning in the ratification debates of 1788, continuing through the establishment of the District in 1800, and its early days as the Nation's Capital. The Constitution was repeatedly criticized for denying District residents a hand in electing Congress. Advocates of representation, including Alexander Hamilton and Members of Congress, sought to address the matter by constitutional amendment or by postponing the formation of the District. Those efforts failed and Members of Congress and commentators indicated that Congress could not provide redress by legislation. Soon after the District's formation, advocates focused on retroceding the land to Maryland and Virginia to restore representation, and in 1846 the southern portion of the District was returned to Virginia, in part for that reason. The Framers of the Constitution were well aware of the Enclave clause, Article I, Section 8, Clause 12, which provides Congress authority to exercise exclusive legislation over such a district, and which some proponents of S. 1257 have recently identified as a constitutional basis for the bill. But during the time the Framers were active in Government there was no proposal of which we are aware to provide District residents congressional representation under its authority. That is not surprising. They understood, as the Supreme Court later confirmed, that the clause is subject to the Constitution's other textural limits and, thus, would not authorize congressional representation for non-States. Consistent with this historical understanding, Congress has consistently and expressly recognized that such representation would require either Statehood or a constitutional amendment. In 1967, and again in 1975, the House Judiciary Committee emphatically stated, ``If citizens of the District are to have voting representation in the Congress, a constitutional amendment is essential. Statutory action alone will not suffice.'' Congress accepted the committee's view and approved a constitutional amendment in 1978 that would have given the District voting representation, but it failed to win ratification. During this period, and particularly during the Johnson and Carter administrations, the Department consistently and emphatically maintained that ``if the District is not to be a State, then a constitutional amendment is required'' to afford its residents voting representation in Congress. The Enclave clause provides no former basis now for providing the District congressional representation than it did in 1788, 1800, 1846, or 1978. Claims that it does authorize such legislation are inconsistent with the Framers' understanding and the consistent historical practice of Congress. They are inconsistent with the bedrock constitutional provisions that specifically address the composition and election of Congress which were carefully crafted to achieve the great compromise that established our bicameral system, and they proved too much. If proponents of this view are current, Congress would also have authority to provide representation to other Federal enclaves and to the territories. Moreover, if the word ``State'' is to be read out of constitutional provisions governing representation, Congress could also disregard the provision's other limits such as on the size of a congressional delegation. Indeed, S. 1257 fixes the District's representation at one Member, without reapportionment, no matter how large its population becomes. The bill's departure from constitutional procedures would provide District residents an anomalous and unstable form of representation. Limited representation in a single House of Congress that can be eliminated at any time by a majority vote and which at best would exist under a cloud of suspect constitutionality, the Constitution establishes clear and uniform standards for representation to avoid that state of affairs. It is through adherence to the Constitution that we best guarantee liberty. If the District is to be given representation, it must be accomplished through a process that is consistent with our constitutional scheme, such as amendment consistent with Article V of the Constitution. Accordingly, if S. 1257 were presented to the President, the senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill. I thank the committee for allowing me to testify and would be happy to take any questions you may have. Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Elwood. [The prepared statement of Mr. Elwood appears as a submission for the record.] Senator Feingold. The vote has just started, but the good news part of it is that there may just be one vote. So I am going to go right over there and come right back. The committee stands in recess. [Whereupon, at 2:30 p.m. the hearing was recessed.] AFTER RECESS [2:50 p.m.] Senator Feingold. I call the committee back to order. I thank you for your patience. I hope we're not interrupted again, but it is certainly possible there will be more votes. But let's proceed. Our next witness is Judge Patricia Wald, who served for 20 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, including a 5-year term as Chief Judge. She retired from the bench in 1999. Judge Wald was appointed by Kofi Annan to sit on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where she served for 2 years until 2001. Judge Wald, it is really an honor to have you here with us today, and you may proceed. STATEMENT OF PATRICIA WALD, FORMER CHIEF JUDGE, U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT, WASHINGTON, D.C. Judge Wald. Thank you, Senator Feingold. Let me begin on a personal note. I was in Congress-- actually on the Hill--testifying 30 years ago, advocating, for the Carter administration, a constitutional amendment, which, as everybody knows, did pass Congress. It would have given the District full representation in both the House and in the Senate. But, of course, it failed State ratification. I am told that the outlet for constitutional amendments is not any more promising today than it was then, but I do want to make one point in reference to Mr. Elwood's testimony. I was the Carter administration's representative in the House, and we did discussed all--we did back a constitutional amendment because that was the bill that was at issue then. I discussed in my testimony, and the other people who appeared with me discussed, four different possibilities or alterations for giving the DC vote. The point I want to make is, not one of them involved the Article I, Section 8, Clause 13 power of Congress to confer it in its role as the exclusive legislator for the District. It simply was never discussed. So I think that when we look at the history, we have to look at that as well. The question that is before this particular Congress is the constitutionality permissibility of Congress legislating under that Article I, Section 8, Clause 13 to provide House representation. And I want to stress here that, from the time of Madison on down, through Supreme Court dicta, as it were, but nonetheless rousing rhetoric in the terms limits case in the early 1990s, it is the House that has been identified as deriving its power from the people and not necessarily from the States. Just let me quote one line from the Federalist Paper Number 39, going to Madison, who said, ``If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a Republic to be a government which derives all its powers, directly or indirectly, from the great body of people. It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of society.'' He went on, ``on confirming the Constitution with the standard here fixed, we perceive at once that the House of Representatives is elected immediately by the great body of the people. The House of Representatives will derive its power from the people of America.'' Now, I listened with awe at Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton's eloquent statement of the morality and the justice, as well as yours, Senator, and Senator Hatch's and Senator Leahy's reasons for giving the District of Columbia House representation. I will, however, stick to my 5 minutes, so I am just going to take up three or four legal constitutional points. As a long-time resident of the District myself, over 25 years, and I came here as a war bride in the early 1950s when my husband was on a ship during the Korean War. I do have a personal interest, but that is all it is, a personal interest. As Senator Hatch repeated from my testimony, I do think it is a close, and I think it somewhat novel, constitutional issue. I do think, however, that Congress has to make up its mind that it is constitutional no matter how close or no matter how novel. In many other fora I have sometimes railed at the notion of, we will let the courts decide. I think that Congress, however close, however novel, has to make up its own mind that this is constitutional. But it is close. That does not mean that it cannot decide that the Constitution tilts on one side rather than the other. There are two potential clauses in the Constitution that are relevant. There is the Section 8, Clause 13, which says that Congress has the power to ``exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over the District.'' Now, that sounds like a plenary grant of power, and indeed, several supreme courts and other courts have talked about how it is greater than the power that the States have over their citizens, and it is plenary, and there is virtually nothing that it cannot encompass. That is not necessarily completely true, because even the District clause has to be accommodated to the rest of the Constitution, as Mr. Elwood pointed out. It couldn't, for instance, say we'll have racial segregation or gender discrimination in the District, but I think what it does say is there must be a clear impediment in the Constitution to Congress exercising its sovereign and plenary power. I want to stress here that we are speaking of Congress's power to legislate, not a citizen's right to demand voting power. That claim was rejected in the three-judge courts, Adams v. Clinton, which was affirmed summarily by the Supreme Court. But I think the principle, if not the only one impediment that has been raised, is Article I, Section 2, which says that ``the House shall be composed of members chosen by the people of the several States and the electors shall have the qualifications requisite for the election of the most numerous branch of that legislature.'' The history of that clause, however, strongly suggests to me that it is not an absolute requirement for voting in Federal elections. Congress and the courts have exercised and recognized a power to bestow voting power on those who would not qualify as State electors for the most numerous branch, as decided by either State supreme courts or by State executives or legislatures. The Overseas Voting Act confers Federal and State voting power on those who emigrate abroad. It uses the convenient fiction--I think I may call it that--that it is merely an extension of bona fide residence, the same concept used in Article II. But, however, if you look at the way the legislation reads and the way it has been applied, it covers all persons who have lived in a particular State whether they intend to return to those States or, indeed, whether they are citizens of the States at all. Ironically, the effect of that has been that if a Massachusetts resident moves permanently to Zimbabwe, she can continue to vote, but if she moves to the District she can't vote. The Supreme Court, in another case, Kornman v. Evans, in 1970, ruled that the State of Maryland tried to, but could not, disenfranchise NIH enclave residents from voting, even though they tried very hard to do so. In fact, they said that they were not residents. There were several early cases that they cited, going back to the 1800s, to say the fact that Congress had the same powers under the Enclave clause as it had under the District, showed that Congress was the exclusive legislator and therefore they were not part of Maryland, and therefore they could not be residents of Maryland. The Supreme Court didn't seem to want any of that. It said, listen we're not going to look at those old cases because we need not consider, they said, the early cases, for the relationship between Federal enclaves and the States in which they are located has changed considerably since they were decided. Then they went off on a Fourteenth Amendment interest of the States, showing that, in fact, Congress had let Maryland take some jurisdiction for several aspects of people who lived in the enclaves. But in so many other aspects, mentioned at greater length by other witnesses, from civil rights, to full faith and credit, to regulation of commerce, to imposition of taxes, Congress has legislated to put the District on a par with the States. I think you have to think hard why Congress should be denied that same power, when the most important civil right of all involves the right to vote for one's leaders. Now, it is the Tidewater case of 1949 that's most frequently cited for the proposition that Congress does have this power under this same so-called District clause. There a plurality--yes, it was a plurality--ruled that, despite limiting language in Article III, that the judicial power of the United States shall extend to, inter alia, controversies between citizens of different States. This plurality found that Congress, pursuant to this same District clause that we are talking about today, could confer power upon the Federal courts, the Article III courts, to hear cases or controversies between District residents and citizens of States. Now, there are several things in that Tidewater case. I do not suggest that it can't be distinguished. It is very easy for lawyers like us and courts to distinguish this case from that case. Of course, there are several distinguishing characteristics. But what's really important is the way the plurality stressed ``deference'' to Congress on the method it sought to achieve a legitimate aim. In that case, the plurality written by Justice Jackson said that Congress had a right to make adequate courts, to set up adequate courts for the DC citizens, and could do that by conferring upon the diversity jurisdiction courts, the Article III courts' jurisdiction to hear cases between District residents and citizens of other States. Now, it is said by the opponents--and if I can predict-- that Jackson also said that he, for the plurality, was dealing with ``the mechanics of administering justice, not involving an extension or denial of a fundamental right.'' I have to pause there to say, Justice Jackson is one of my heroes, but I wonder if he really read the ratification debates, because all over them are proponents of States worrying about having their cases taken from their State courts and put into the Federal diversity courts. But, nonetheless, I think even more important, in the next line--again, quoting--Jackson said, ``The considerations which bid us strictly to apply the Constitution to constitutional enactments, which invade fundamental freedoms or which reach for powers which would substantially disturb the balance between the Union and its component States, are not present here. Such a law should be stricken down only upon a clear showing that it transgressed constitutional limitations.'' I would say that we have no such showing, no such clear showing, that this bill would constitute a law that transgressed constitutional limitations, upset the balance between Congress and the States, since Congress has always had the ability under Article IV to admit new States. And certainly there is no invasion of fundamental rights, there is an extension. Senator Feingold. Thank you. Judge Wald. I see that my time is up. The most I will do is say that there is so much evidence about who said what during the ratification debates, that there is grist for everybody's mill in there. It's like the Bible, there's something for everybody there. But I do think a couple of things stand out. There is no evidence Congress meant, ever, to disenfranchise the District residents permanently. It legislated initially to let the residents of the ceded territories continue their voting in State elections. When Madison assumed in the Federalist Paper that is quoted so often that the States would take care of their own in the act of setting up the District, I have to ask myself, how could they have done that? Even if they had been smart enough to do that and said we want to continue letting our people have the vote, would not there have had to be an enactment of Congress which put that into the organic law? And it would have been a statute. I didn't see any reference to that having to go through by a constitutional amendment. So in concluding, I would say that, because of the plenary grant of power under the District's legislative clause and the absence of any clear impediment to Congress exercising that power, and in light of the overwhelming justice--after all, I think one other Justice once said it is a Constitution we are expounding here and I think we have a right to look at the aspirations, and the fact that the underlying--perhaps the greatest underlying Democratic/Republican notion in the Constitution is the right to select one's own leaders. The fact that it is the very Congress which is composed now of the States that is going to be passing this, it is not a court, or even the executive, levying it on Congress, it is Congress itself that is doing that. Congress has every right to tilt the-- Senator Feingold. Can I ask you to wrap up, please? Judge Wald. I am done. Senator Feingold. OK. Judge Wald. Can I finish the sentence? [Laughter.] Congress has every right to tilt the constitutional balance in favor of the legislation. Senator Feingold. I do not like doing this to judges. Judge Wald. Thank you. Senator Feingold. Thank you for your very learned testimony. Our next witness is Professor Jonathan Turley from the George Washington University Law School. Professor Turley is a well-known legal commentator on television and has represented whistle-blowers, military personnel, and CIA officers, among others. I have quoted him on a number of occasions but, I'd say to Representative Norton, never on this subject. [Laughter.] He holds degrees from the University of Chicago and Northwestern Law School. Professor Turley, thank you for joining us today. The floor is yours. STATEMENT OF JONATHAN TURLEY, PROFESSOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL, WASHINGTON, D.C. Professor Turley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Senator Hatch, thank you to the committee for inviting me on this important subject. I hope at the outset we can agree that this is a matter for people of good faith to disagree about, and it is not a debate about those who would want a vote for the District of Columbia and those who do not want a vote for the District of Columbia. I am hoping all of us can agree that the current status of the District of Columbia is a scandal--it long has been a scandal--and that the citizens should not remain disenfranchised. For that reason, I agree with my good friend, Eleanor Holmes Norton, on virtually everything she had to say, except for the fact that she's calling my mother to rebut me. [Laughter.] But one of the greatest things we could do to improve Congress would be, indeed, to have Delegate Norton as a voting member. She is a national treasure. But that still does not influence how one views the Constitution. If it were up to me, if it was a matter of looking just to Eleanor Holmes Norton, I would have no question at all as to what we should all do. But this has always been a debate about the means and not the ends. I'm afraid that this bill is the wrong means, in my view. Now, Senator Pat Moynihan once said that everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts. You're going to hear a lot of disagreement coming from me and others as to what the facts are in terms of the Constitution. I've submitted roughly 70 pages of testimony to leave no question, in my view, as to the intent of the Framers as to the status of the District of Columbia. I believe the Framers would be surprised to see the suggestion that the District is without representation. It has the exact representation that they intended. The District is represented by the Congress of the United States. That is exactly how they envisioned it, that is exactly how they stated it. Now, we may have great problems with that, and I actually would probably agree that it was a bad design. It has led to the disenfranchisement of citizens for too long. But I do not believe that there is any doubt from the record as to what the intent of the Framers are, but we should start all constitutional issues with the text of the Constitution. And the relevant clause is not the District clause, as convenient as that may be, it's the composition clause. It is the clause that defines the Members of the U.S. Congress. It is perhaps one of the most important clauses in the Constitution. It was the subject of endless debate. The Framers were obsessed about States and they were obsessed about who would make up the Congress of the United States. They spent a lot of time on the composition clause. And Article I, Section 2 is a model of clarity. It says what they meant, that it is limited to the representatives of the several States. That reference to ``States'' is ubiquitous throughout Article I, in that the meaning of ``States'' is perfectly coherent and consistent, until you change it with this bill. Then it becomes incoherent. But I want to address very quickly the argument that somehow the Constitutional Convention and the ratification is somehow ambiguous or that the Framers just didn't think about this, or it was an oversight. I must tell you, I think there is no basis for that assertion. If there were a basis, I think I would be on the other side of this table, of this debate. In the Constitutional Convention, when it came to the composition clause, the Framers were very clear that they meant States. In fact, nobody has suggested that they had anything else in mind when they used the word ``States''. But, indeed, in the first defense of a Framer after the Constitutional Convention by James Wilson, he assured people that they had nothing to be afraid of from Congress, that Congress would not usurp the authority of the States, because it said, after all, Article I says that Members have to be selected from the several States. He said, if there's no State legislature there can't be a Member of Congress. That view was carried forth in the 4th Congress, with many Framers in the Congress, in 1794, when a member of the territory of Ohio tried to get entrance as a voting member. He was allowed in as a non-voting member, but both sides of that debate agreed that only Representatives of the States--the States--can vote. Now, I also want to note that I talk about the qualifications clause, which I would be interested in expanding on. But when you look at the incoherence that occurs when you change the meaning of ``States'', you look at the qualifications clause and look at the debate behind the qualifications clause, you'll see what I mean. They were very clear. They did not want Congress to have the ability to manipulate the membership of its body. In fact, the Supreme Court looked at that history of the qualifications debate which followed the John Wilkes controversy in England, and the courts said that it was the manipulation of the membership, of the roles of Congress, that the Framers wanted to prevent and said, it's designed, and this is quote from the Supreme Court, ``to stop Congress from being a self-perpetuating body to the detriment of the republic.'' If you can manipulate your roles, you could do great harm to this republic, and that is what you are suggesting today. Now, I point out in my testimony that in the Constitutional Convention, but also in the ratification debates, there are numerous references to the status of the District. It was as controversial then as it is now. You could take those debates, change the names, and you would have the transcript of this hearing. People were appalled by the fact that we were creating a Federal enclave where District residents would not have representation. People called it despotic, they called the residents vassals. No one less than Alexander Hamilton tried to change it, tried to amend it. In fact, one of the various amendments in the State ratification conventions was this proposal. There was an amendment offered to give the District a vote in the House. It was rejected. Now, I know that I am running out of time, but I will simply note that the issue during retrocession came up with the District. The citizens of Virginia immediately hated the status. They despised the status of being without representation and almost immediately began a retrocession movement. During that ample debate and the report of Congress looking at both the Virginia and Democratic sides, Congress noted that the District residents did not want to retrocede, that they were given the choice: do you want to stay in this status or would you like to have a voting status back with Maryland? The report quotes District residents as saying that they are entirely content to remain in this status, and in fact a vote in Georgetown which was recorded was 559:139 against retrocession and in favor of keeping their current position. Now, I go through the dangers that are presented by this type of interpretation. I hope that you will consider it quite seriously. I know that you will. But at the end of this debate, all of us have a duty to try to rectify this terrible status. But the Constitution doesn't make things easy. In fact, the really important things that we have to do are often hard, and there's a reason why this hasn't happened before. We tried a Constitution amendment and it failed, and retrocession didn't have support. Those are hard roads, but those are the roads that the Framers left to you. It doesn't allow shortcuts. I commend the rest of my comments to the record, with the permission of the committee. Senator Feingold. Thank you very much, Professor Turley. [The prepared statement of Professor Turley appears as a submission for the record.] Senator Feingold. Our next witness is Professor Charles Ogletree, who is the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founding and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. Professor Ogletree is a prominent legal theorist and advocate for civil rights, and also a well-known legal commentator on television. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School. Professor, thank you for joining us today, and you may proceed. STATEMENT OF CHARLES J. OGLETREE, JESSE CLIMENKO PROFESSOR OF LAW, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS Mr. Ogletree. Senator Feingold, thank you for allowing me to be here today. And Senator Hatch, it is always a pleasure to see you again. I am very delighted to have a few minutes to talk about the constitutionality of S. 1257. I would ask that my testimony be part of the record and that the court as well consider the excellent testimony of my former student, Viet Din, who worked in the Republican administration, my friend and adversary, former Solicitor General, Kenneth Starr, who also worked in the Republican administration, and Senator Hatch's testimony, which I think crystallizes the conflict with the need to see a clear resolution in this matter. I think not only can the Senate support this legislation, but it must. I say that in the context of the time that we face now. The Attorney General from Utah stole some of my thunder, but it is important. This is 150 years since the Dredd Scott decision in 1857 and it crystallizes both the way that our courts and our Congress interpreted laws. They were wrong. They were mortally wrong. They were fatally wrong in ways that we are still paying the debt for society today. I think that if you look at this in the broader context, that is, if you look at Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 which makes clear that Congress has the power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District and grants Congress both plenary and exclusive authority to legislate all matters concerning the District, Professor Turley wants to move away from that. I think we have to embrace that in a serious way. In the same respects, I would ask the Senate hearing to think of a couple of important contexts as well. When you think about where we are, even in Adams v. Clinton, the Supreme Court's decision on District of Columbia authority, the Supreme Court did not deny that Congress has authority to grant DC voting rights. It wasn't explicitly denied. I think it gives you even more ground to take a look at this. If you go back to the Hepburn case that's been referenced in Mr. Turley's comments earlier, and Chief Justice Marshall made it clear, it is not the Court, but Congress who must adjudicate these issues. I think, in light of that, this Congress has a particular responsibility in a propitious time. In the 18th century, we had the Revolutionary War, which was the war of freedom. It wasn't the Constitution, it wasn't the Bill of Rights, it was the people who fought that war for freedom. In the 19th century, as a result of the Dredd Scott decision, we had the Civil War, the war of equality. That is, even though the Court, our highest Court, said that people weren't equal, it took a war and the bloodshed of hundreds of thousands of people for us to move from the period of inequality to the period of equality. In the 21st century, we have a propitious opportunity for representation, the period of justice. For the first time, this Congress, not the aristocracy who drafted the Constitution 200 years ago, not a group of people sitting in a room, but this Congress can look at the history, the context, and look at Judge Frank Esterbrook's--from the Seventh Circuit--article about plain meaning. The one thing he says is pretty powerful: ``The plain meaning makes no sense at all because nothing is plain when we talk about the Constitution and what it means some 200 years after.'' I would ask as well, as Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton talked about being a District of Columbia resident and being born here, she follows another great DC resident who I admire greatly, Charles Hamilton Houston. He grew up in this city and went to the same high school, formerly the M Street High School in Washington, DC, left here, went to Amhurst College, became a valedictorian, went to Harvard Law School, the first African- American ever on the Harvard Law Review. He took all of his talent to come back to try to understand how to make the Constitution work for all the people. He came back here and became a professor at Howard Law School, transformed that law school from an unaccredited to an accredited law school. Changed the faculty. He consulted with his colleagues at Harvard Law School, people like Roscoe Pound, people like Felix Frankfurter, about, could he bring a suit in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s to challenge the law that said Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision, was constitutional. They told him to a person, he had no authority to do that. The Constitution was clear, the court was clear: there was no challenge. Houston didn't accept that temporary interpretation of the law. Instead, he went to work with Thurgood Marshall, a native of Maryland, and with Oliver Hill, who just turned 100 years old, a native of Virginia, and those men, and others, came together to change America when it came to the issue of racial equality. What they accomplished in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 is exactly what I think this Senate and this Congress has to accomplish in the year 2007. This is a year to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Dredd Scott, but as well it's a year for Congress to stand tall, to stand together, to see the bipartisan support for this, and to determine, I believe, with clarity and conviction that the District of Columbia residents who are born here will have the right to vote and be counted for the first time in the history of this District. Thank you. Senator Feingold. Thank you so much, Professor Ogletree. [The prepared statement of Professor Ogletree appears as a submission for the record.] Senator Feingold. Our next witness, Ken Thomas, has been a legislative attorney with the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service for 20 years. Mr. Thomas advises Congress on various constitutional issues, including Federalism, individual rights, and the judiciary. He is a 1983 graduate of the George Washington University Law School. Mr. Thomas, welcome to the committee. You may proceed. STATEMENT OF KENNETH R. THOMAS, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE, WASHINGTON, D.C. Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Hatch. I'd like to thank you for inviting me to testify today regarding S. 1257, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007. Now, a number of panelists today have focused on what the Founding Fathers might have thought on this issue. What I'd like to focus on today is what the Supreme Court has said on the various subjects that we're discussing today. As everybody has indicated, Article I, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution provides that the House of Representatives shall be composed of ``members of the several States.'' The meaning of this clause appears to be relatively clear. For instance, in the 1805 case of Hepburn v. Elsey, the Supreme Court denied District citizens the right to bring a Federal diversity suit against citizens from other States, or from the States. In a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice John Marshall, the court held that such jurisdiction was limited to State citizens for the same reason that the District of Columbia was not granted House Members or Senators, and this was because the plain meaning of the term ``State'' did not include the District of Columbia. More recently, in the case of Adams v. Clinton in the year 2000, the Supreme Court summarily affirmed a lower court ruling that the District could not be considered a State for purposes of having a vote in the House. This conclusion has also been consistently reached by a variety of other courts and is supported by most commentators. Assuming for the moment that this position is correct, let's then move to the other question, which is whether Congress has the authority someplace else in the Constitution to override the apparent limitations of the House representation clause. In this regard, of course, the argument has been made that Congress has plenary authority over the District of Columbia under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, and that this clause is an independent authority to grant the District a voting representative. The case which has been most often cited for this proposition is the 1948 Supreme Court case of National Mutual Insurance Company v. Tidewater Transfer Company. In Tidewater, Congress enacted a statute extending Federal diversity jurisdiction to cases between citizens of States and the District, even though, as I just mentioned, the Court had previously held that the Constitution does not allow for such suits. Because the statute was upheld, arguments had been made that the same reasoning could be used to grant House Membership for a Representative of the District. On close examination, however, the Tidewater case does not appear to support the constitutionality of S. 1257. While five Justices agreed in the result of the Tidewater case, these Justices did not agree on their reasoning. Three of the Justices, as indicated by Judge Wald, held that the DC residents could seek diversity jurisdiction based on Congress's power under the District clause. Two Justices rejected this argument entirely and instead would have overruled the Hepburn case, as I discussed earlier. These are the five Justices who were essential to the result in this case. Since there were four Justices in dissent and they also rejected this expansive interpretation of the District clause, that means that six of the Tidewater Justices specifically rejected the notion that the District clause could be used as a means to expand constitutional provisions that were limited to States. Of even greater concern is that even the three-judge plurality emphasized the narrowness of the ruling. Justice Jackson noted that ``granting diversity jurisdiction neither affected the mechanics of administering justice, nor involved the extension or denial of a fundamental right, nor did it substantially disturb the balance between the Union and its component States.'' Arguably, allowing non-State representatives a deciding vote in Congress on issues of national importance could be seen by the Supreme Court as a substantial disturbance to the existing federalism structure. Now, while there are questions as to whether S. 1257 could pass constitutional scrutiny, I should note that most of the provisions of S. 1257 could be presented directly to the States by the Congress as a constitutional amendment. For instance, unlike earlier constitutional proposals which have given the District representation in the House, two Senators, a full slate of Presidential electors, and the power to vote on amendments to the Constitution, a more limited constitutional amendment could be crafted to provide the District of Columbia one vote in the House. Further, in order to achieve the same goal of political balance, a statute could be passed granting Utah a fourth vote in the House, but making it contingent on the passage of such a constitutional amendment. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my prepared statement. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you or members of the committee may have, and I look forward to working with all members of the committee and their staff on this issue. Senator Feingold. Thanks so much, Mr. Thomas. [The prepared statement of Mr. Thomas appears as a submission for the record.] Senator Feingold. Our final witness, Richard Bress, is a partner in the Washington office of Latham & Watkins. He practices in the area of appellate and constitutional litigation. Before joining Latham, Mr. Bress served in the Office of the Solicitor General. He received his undergraduate degree and MBA from Cornell University and his law degree from Stanford. He was a law clerk for Judge Steven Williams on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and Justice Antonin Scalia. Thank you for joining us today. The floor is yours. STATEMENT OF RICHARD P. BRESS, PARTNER, LATHAM & WATKINS, LLP, WASHINGTON, D.C. Mr. Bress. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Hatch. I appreciate the opportunity to be invited here today on this important subject. Others more eloquent than I have addressed the policy reasons why this is so important, why this Act should be passed. I will not try to elaborate on those. Opponents of the bill have stressed, and taken pains, really, to stress that they come here in good faith and do not oppose the bill for political or policy reasons. Instead, they have said that they oppose it because, in their view, it is unconstitutional. I have studied their arguments with great care. I have read all 70 pages, for example, of Professor Turley's submission, as well as those filed by others. I have read the legislative history that they have read. I have read the history of the debates, as they have. I have read the precedents and I have studied the text. After doing that, I cannot agree with them. I believe that this is a difficult question, as Judge Wald noted. I think it is a close question and a novel one. But in the end, having studied the text, the structure, the precedents, and the history, I can't agree that the evidence shows that the Framers intentionally disenfranchised, and permanently intentionally disenfranchised, the people of the District of Columbia. Rather than read from my prepared statement which I'd like to submit for the record, I think it would be more fruitful for me to comment on a couple of the arguments that we've heard here today so as not to repeat others. There really are two constitutional provisions that are primarily at issue here. There is the Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, which is the District clause, and there is the Article I, Section 2, which is the composition clause. As far as the District clause goes, it is exclusive legislative jurisdiction for all cases. It has been described as plenary, it's been described as extraordinary. It's not unlimited. As Judge Wald noted, certainly Congress can't act under that provision of the Constitution in a way that would violate express, or even specific, prohibitions elsewhere in the Constitution, and I think everyone on this panel would agree with that. So I think the question that we will come down to is, are there any express, or distinct, or specific prohibitions against providing the District of Columbia a voting Member of the House of Representatives? Before I move on to that clause, before I move on to the composition clause, which is cited by the opponents of the bill as the prohibition that would prevent such an enactment, I would like to discuss, briefly, the Tidewater case which has been discussed by Mr. Thomas. In Tidewater, as this Court heard, five Justices of the Supreme Court concluded that Congress had the authority to provide District residents with diversity jurisdiction in the Federal courts, even though the Constitution says that diversity jurisdiction is for suits between citizens of different States. Now, Mr. Thomas takes a look at that case and understands that there's a parallel to this one. He appreciates that in the Hepburn case, Chief Justice Marshall noted that the use of the word ``State'' in the diversity jurisdiction clause is the same use of the ``State'' as in the composition clause. I don't disagree with him there, but I guess where I would disagree with him is where you go from there, because in the Tidewater case five Justices concluded that the diversity jurisdiction clause would permit diversity jurisdiction for the District upon constitutional enactment. I read Tidewater to suggest that the same would be true here. Now, as far as the three Justices in the plurality in that Case go, I disagree with Mr. Thomas that they wouldn't have been with us here. He makes a distinction there between fundamental liberties and other matters that can be legislated for the District, but actually one of the things that Justice Jackson said in that case is that you couldn't use the clause ``to invade fundamental freedoms or to substantially disturb the balance between the Union and its component States.'' I would submit to you that this bill would do neither. It would actually expand fundamental freedoms and it certainly wouldn't substantially change the balance between the States and the Federal Union. As far as the two concurring members of that court go, those two Justices emphasized that the case wasn't about State relations and treating the District as a State, it involved individual freedoms. Once again, I think we have a parallel here in this case. This is about the individual right to vote, the vote of the people, as has been discussed here, which is the vote for the House as opposed to, perhaps, the Senate, which would be more of a State representation in the legislature. I would like to move on now. I understand I'm getting close to the end of my time, but I'd like to address also some of the history because Professor Turley has stated that the history is incredibly robust, that you can go back to the debates of the Constitutional Convention and the ratification debates in the States, and my gosh, you'll find everything just as fulsome as you have here and as you have had in similar panels before the House of Representatives and the Senate. I disagree strongly with that. I've gone back and re-read all of those materials, which are online and word searchable. What you'll find when you do that, is Professor Turley, with all due respect, has picked out snippets of history, statements made by particular legislators or others that support his position in this matter. A couple of comments on that. First of all, some of the snippets come from anti-Federalists who were prone, because they were arguing against the enactment of the Constitution, to exaggerate the evils that they believed that the Constitution would lead to. But another point that I'd like to make is that there's plenty among the snippets that cuts the other way. For example, you've got evidence from Mr. Madison and others that there was a strong belief that the States would take care of the liberties of the citizens of the States who were going to end up in this Federal District, the ceded part of those States, if you will, and that those States would provide for their fundamental and essential freedoms. We know that in 1790, when those States ceded the territory and the session was accepted, which is all that's required under the District clause to create the District, from them till 1800 the vote continued for those citizens as votes in their prior States. Now, Alexander Hamilton has been invoked as well here against this bill. I think he'd actually be on our side of the debate. His amendment, if you look at it closely, presumes that the citizens of the States, of the parts of the States that were ceded, would continue to vote with those States. What his amendment was geared toward, actually, was not changing whether they would have the right to vote, but to provide that that vote would automatically become a vote as citizens of the District when the District attained a certain population level. Now, it's true that that didn't pass, but that doesn't tell you very much about this bill. It certainly doesn't tell you that he believed that those citizens wouldn't continue to have the right to vote. In fact, it tells you that he thought they would. It doesn't tell you that the Constitutional Convention or the State ratifiers, as a whole, would have been against this, because all it tells you is they didn't believe that it should be set up automatically. I'd like to address, briefly, why not. I mean, what did we have back then when they were acting? Well, first of all, we didn't know then where the District would be. There was every chance that the District would be inside of a State, and in that case it was presumed--I think quite reasonably--that the vote would continue for the people in that District along with the State. Second, what we know, is there weren't very many people in areas that were 10 x 10 square back then. In fact, the only city in America at that point in time that would have had enough residents in it to qualify for a vote as a District or as a new State would have been New York City. New York City had about 34,000 people in it. You needed 30,000 to get a voting district, or 60,000 to be admitted as a State. So there was really no reason for the Framers to expect that there would be enough people at that time to justify a seat for the District qua District. Another thing that you'll see as you move a little bit forward in history, is Professor Turley addressed what happened in 1800 and later. Now, certainly in 1800 when Congress took control and the Federal Government took control of the District, the legislation that they enacted took away the vote of the people who were then living in the District. And it's been suggested that this and the failure to remedy it shows that Congress lacks the authority to remedy it today. I guess what I'd say to that, are two things. No. 1, there was still a very small number of people in the District. There were 8,000 people in the District. That was 22,000 people too few to qualify for their own vote. No. 2, it was widely--and I think reasonably--assumed that the 8,000 people in the District would be mingling so frequently with the Members of Congress that their views would be taken into account. Today, of course, things are far different: there's 560,000 or so people in the District and, as much as they'd like to mingle with you, the chances of that are far and few between. [Laughter.] So I finished looking at the text, the precedent, and the history, and what I come out of it with is really an utter failure to see intent of the Framers to deprive, permanently deprive, the citizens, the residents of the District of the right to vote. It's that intent that I would have to find in here to conclude that Congress lacks the authority, under the District clause, to remedy this great tragedy. Thank you. Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Bress. [The prepared statement of Mr. Bress appears as a submission for the record.] Senator Feingold. This has been just an excellent panel. I thank all of you. I would like to include in the record the statement of Senator Kennedy on this matter, without objection. [The prepared statement of Senator Kennedy appears as a submission for the record.] Senator Feingold. Senator Hatch has a pressing matter that he needs to get to, but would like to ask a round of questions before I do, and I'm happy to have him do that. Senator Hatch, we'll do 7-minute rounds. Senator Hatch. Well, thank you, Senator. Thank you for your graciousness, which you always show. I'm very grateful to you. Mr. Bress, since you finished, let me ask a few questions of you. I appreciate your acknowledging that this is a serious constitutional question, as I think all of you have. You've been analyzing and writing about the legal issues related to District representation in the House for several years, as I understand it, so you know that there are, indeed, arguments on both sides. Mr. Elwood argues that the language in the District representation clause is, as he puts it, ``unambiguous''. You say in your statement that the language in that clause is ``indeterminate''. Which is it? Doesn't the word ``States'' mean ``States''? Mr. Bress. Your Honor, I do believe that the word ``State'' means ``States''. I guess the question isn't whether ``States'' in that provision means a State, but rather whether that clause evinces a desire to prohibit Congress from acting under the District clause to permit a District Representative. Senator Hatch. We certainly acted to have a constitutional delegate who has a right to vote, as long as her vote doesn't change anything, as long as it doesn't mean anything. Mr. Bress. Indeed, Senator Hatch. Moreover, as Judge Wald-- Senator Hatch. And that's gone on for quite a while. Mr. Bress. It has been. And as Judge Wald noted, of course, overseas residents, who are not by any common understanding of the language, nor of the laws of the States, residents of the States any longer are still permitted to vote as residents of the State under that provision. So if that provision were so clear and so unambiguous, you wouldn't find that. Plus, of course, residents of the Federal enclaves whom the States have already said are not eligible to vote for State legislators, nonetheless, have been found by the Supreme Court to be sufficiently residents to qualify under that clause. So, no. I guess I would submit, it's not as clear as all of that, as constitutional law often isn't. Senator Hatch. Well, America's Founders clearly made a choice not to have the Nation's Capital be one of its constituent parts, so they created a District separate from any of the States in the Union. Now, one of the important questions that we have to wrestle with is whether, in doing that, America's Founders also intended that the citizens who should reside, who would reside in the District, would be disenfranchised without House representation that those citizens would enjoy if they lived anywhere else. Now, how did the Founders expect District residents would be treated with respect to representation? Did they intend that because the District is not a State, District residents would be without House representation? Mr. Bress. No, Senator Hatch. I'm sorry, I keep saying ``Your Honor'' because I'm used to being in court. [Laughter.] I don't believe they did. As I've noted earlier, I think my best reading--and again, this is murky and there aren't clear answers. But my best reading of the history is that they supposed that the States, the ceding States, would take care of those who were in the land that was being ceded for the District. And once again, if we were talking about a District that was in the middle of a State, I don't think there would be any question that those citizens would have continued to vote with the State, as citizens who live in Federal enclaves do today if they're in the middle of a State. I think things got a bit complicated when it turned out later on, after the Constitution was enacted, that the District straddled two States and provision wasn't made at that time to continue voting after the Federal Government took over in 1800. As I've noted before, I think that there were political reasons why at that point those in Congress and those who had been Framers didn't push harder for a law that would give District residents the vote. I think both the small size of the District, 8,000 people, certainly wasn't enough in people's minds to permit continued voting for the District as District residents, qua District residents. I really do believe that the small number of people in the District, and the historical materials bear this out, gave people confidence that those serving in this body and serving in the House of Representatives would be taking into account the views of those who lived in the District. I just don't think those things hold true today. Neither of them do. And, no, I don't read the Framers as ever evidencing a view that 500,000-plus people living in the Nation's Capital would be denied the right to vote. Senator Hatch. Well, let me ask you a related question. Some have argued--and I think perhaps Professor Turley, who's with us today, would be in this camp--that rejected of Alexander Hamilton's proposed constitutional amendment to give the District representation in the House amounted to a deliberate rejection of such representation. I want to know if you agree with that, and did America's Founders affirmatively intend that citizens living in the District would have no representation in Congress? Mr. Bress. No. I actually strongly disagree with that. Having read Alexander Hamilton's amendment, I think it's awfully clear what he was trying to accomplish. Hamilton took, in the amendment, as a given that the residents of the District would have the ability to continue to vote with their former States, and all that his amendment would have accomplished is to automatically permit them to vote as residents of the Federal District when the Federal District attained a certain size. So, No. 1, it becomes quite clear that being District residents, in Alexander Hamilton's view, was not enough to mean that they wouldn't get the right to vote. So there you've got this sort of square first point, which is the fact that they're residents of the District and not of a State wouldn't have been enough. Now, there was the second part where he was trying to enact a provision that would have given District residents the right, qua District residents, to vote once the District attained a certain size. That didn't pass, but it's very hard to get much out of that. What you have there is a proposed amendment at a State ratifying convention that doesn't pass, with no legislative history one way or the other as to why not. I think it's very hard to draw conclusions from that. Senator Hatch. Well, the District of Columbia is not the only place that does not have representation--or the status of a State, let's put it that way--in which American citizens live. Some have argued that giving full House representation to District residents would necessarily lead to similar privileges for other entities, such as territories. I believe Mr. Thomas from the Congressional Research Service, who is with us today, I think you make that argument as well. I'm not sure this is a constitutional argument, that Congress somehow is foreclosed from granting the District of Columbia House representation because doing so would lead to unintended consequences. I think it's more of a practical argument. Mr. Bress. I would agree with you completely, Senator. Senator Hatch. Well, could you respond to that? And will granting the District representation necessarily lead to granting the territories representation? Mr. Bress. Your Honor, I would agree with you that it's primarily--Your Honor. Senator Hatch. Senator Hatch. That's OK. I like it. [Laughter.] Mr. Bress. At any rate, I would agree with you entirely, that it's primarily a practical question. Certainly the imperatives toward granting the District residents the right to vote do not exist equally with regard to the citizens of the territories. The citizens of the District are unique in being subject to the draft, to Federal income tax, and not being able to vote. The District is also unique as having once been among the United States, plural, and having been carved out of them. I don't believe that the same political imperatives exist for it. Also, of course, the constitutional provision is different, whereas the provision that we're discussing, the District clause, provides for exclusive legislative jurisdiction, the clause with respect to the territories says ``to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory.'' I don't know, and I won't tell you now, how exactly that ought to be interpreted with regard to potential voting rights for the territories. It's not a subject that I've studied closely. But it is different, and I don't think we can necessarily draw the same conclusions from it. Senator Hatch. Well, I have questions for each of you, especially for Turley, over here. [Laughter.] And Thomas, too. This has been a very good panel. Mr. Chairman, you've done an excellent job in getting really good people here. We appreciate all of you, each and every one of you. I think we've had some very cogent remarks. I particularly wanted to go after Mr. Elwood here today, but I'll spare you that, because I personally believe that I wouldn't sign on to something like this if I didn't think there was enough constitutional justification for it. But I do agree that there are legitimate questions that have been raised, and would be raised, that I knew of as well. But I think, on balance, I agree with you, Professor Ogletree, it's time to right this wrong. We can do it this way. Now, if the court chooses later to say we're wrong, I can live with that, if that's the way it is. I personally don't believe they will. I think it's worthwhile pursuing. Judge Wald, it's so nice to see you again. We appreciate each and every one of you. You've made great contributions to this committee on this very important subject, something that I feel very deeply about. I hope that we're successful in passing this. And if we're wrong, Professor Turley, Mr. Elwood, Mr. Thomas, you'll win in the end. But if we're right, you will go down in the history thinking, ``How in the hell could I be so stupid?'' [Laughter.] No, no. Senator Feingold. He was kidding. Senator Hatch. I am only kidding. Senator Feingold. For the record. Senator Hatch. These are very, very bright people and I have great respect for all of you. Senator Feingold. Thank you, Senator Hatch. Senator Hatch. Thank you. Senator Feingold. We were doing so well. [Laughter.] Thank you for your involvement with this issue and for your involvement with this hearing. Senator Hatch. I am going to have to pay for that out in Utah. [Laughter.] Senator Feingold. Yes, I think so. [Laughter.] Let me ask some questions. Mr. Elwood, as you know, the Justice Department, particularly the Solicitor General, is responsible for defending duly enacted Federal statutes against constitutional challenges. In 2001, I had occasion to ask the nominee for Solicitor General at that time, Ted Olson, about the Department's responsibility in cases where it had doubts about the constitutionality of the statute. He had written the following in a Law Review article in 1982: ``We in the Justice Department must also defend the constitutionality of congressional enactments, whether we like them or not, in almost all cases. We are the Government's lawyer, so even if we disagree with the policies of the law and even if we feel that it is of questionable constitutionality, we must enforce it and we must defend it.'' I asked him if he still held that view and he answered as follows: ``Yes, I do. And there are, of course, circumstances, and they were mentioned by Attorney General Ashcroft and they have been mentioned by other people in the Department of Justice from time to time. ``For example, situations where the Executive's power involved or where something is clearly unconstitutional or there's no reasonable defense that can be mounted with respect to a statute because we have an obligation to the courts, especially the U.S. Supreme Court, to make arguments that we believe are legitimate arguments. ``But I strongly believe,'' he continued, ``as a matter of separation of powers and the responsibility of the Department, that there's a heavy burden of presumption that the statute is constitutional. We must be vigorous advocates for the Congress when we go before the courts,'' he said. So my first question to you is, do you have any doubt that the Department of Justice would defend this statute in court if it is passed by the House and Senate and signed by the President? Mr. Elwood. Well, to begin with, I'd just like to--if I can preface my remarks, I just want to make clear that the disagreements that the Department has with this bill, again, are not based on policy at all, they're simply based on matters of constitutional principle, which we've had for a while. Obviously I can't commit the Justice Department in advance to what its position would be, but it is true that the Department ordinarily defends enactments of Congress, if there are reasonable arguments to be made in its favor. Certainly Mr. Olson--I worked with him--defended a lot of bills that he might not have agreed with on policy grounds, but that wasn't the inquiry. There have been other times when the Department didn't defend enactments of Congress, such as, under the Clinton administration they didn't defend the Miranda override bill. Senator Feingold. Well, let's use your exact language here. Is it your view that a reasonable argument in favor of the constitutionality of the statute can be made? Mr. Elwood. It's kind of a hard position for me, a hard question for me to answer, only because the Department has taken the position for as long as it has. But certainly colorable arguments have been mustered on the other side. I think they're ultimately unpersuasive. But I think the fact that Congress, both Houses of Congress, would have underwritten them would certainly be a factor that the Solicitor General would take into consideration in determining whether to defend the bill on appeal. Senator Feingold. Well, I must say I was hoping for a stronger answer. Mr. Olson was a clear opponent of the McCain- Feingold legislation, but when I asked him about whether or not he would vigorously defend that, he had no hesitation and said he would. I think you know the record. Not only did he disagree with the statute itself, but he ended up doing a brilliant job of arguing in favor of it before the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Elwood. In fairness-- Senator Feingold. So I think it is important to reassure the committee that I think obviously there are arguments against this, but the notion that there are not reasonable arguments in favor of it strikes me as problematic. Mr. Elwood. The thing is, I just want to make the point that it's easier for him to say that than for me because he's in a much better position to know. He is the boss and I am several rungs down and one office over, essentially. But it is true that there are arguments to be made, very colorable arguments, and that it is always a very important thing to the executive branch that Congress was persuaded by these arguments themselves because we understand you take your obligations seriously. You take the same oath that we do. If you think it's constitutional, that's definitely something that they weight very heavily. Senator Feingold. OK. Mr. Elwood, one argument you made struck me and I'd like to followup on it. You noted that the vote for DC permitted by this bill can easily be repealed by a future Congress and is of dubious constitutionality, suggesting that statehood or a constitutional amendment would be a more solid way to get representation in the District. Does this administration support statehood or a constitutional amendment? Mr. Elwood. Again, I'm afraid that my answer is going to be unsatisfying to you. I'm in the Office of Legal Counsel. We're law nerds. I can't say anything about policy matters. Senator Feingold. Are you aware of any statement from the administration supporting either statehood or a constitutional amendment? Mr. Elwood. I think that I can only say what I know has been basically run up the flag pole through the whole OMB process, and that is that if representation is going to be given we think it should be given in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution. Certainly you cannot impugn the amendment process or the-- Senator Feingold. But the administration has indicated no support for either statehood or a constitutional amendment. Is that correct? Mr. Elwood. I don't know that it has taken a position, but we are not a policy shop, we're purely questions of law. Senator Feingold. Are you aware of anything that the administration has done at all to try to secure representation for the District? Are you aware of any? Mr. Elwood. I am not aware. But again, it is a matter of policy and I am just completely questions of law. Senator Feingold. I'm simply going with regard to the scope of your knowledge, but I think it does undercut that argument a bit when you realize the actual record of the administration on that. Mr. Elwood. Well, I will note, though, that the Carter administration and the Johnson administration, both of which were ardently in favor of voting for the District, both took the position that it couldn't be accomplished by simple legislation and that both-- Senator Feingold. That it could not be accomplished? Mr. Elwood. Could not be accomplished by simple legislation, it had to be done by amendment. Senator Feingold. My problem here is that it rings a little more hollow with an administration that has not advanced those positions, but it certainly would be consistent from a constitutional point of view. I'm going to let Judge Wald respond. Judge Wald. I simply wanted to reiterate, Senator, that, again, to the best of my memory--and I hope that's not a dubious phrase any more, going back 30 years--in the discussions we had about my testimony on the constitutional amendment in 1978, it was before the House but it was in conjunction with John Harmon, who then headed the Office of Legal Counsel. We never discussed this option of the authority. Senator Feingold. Judge, were you done there? Were you done with your response? Judge Wald. Yes. Senator Feingold. OK. Go ahead, Mr. Elwood. Mr. Elwood. I think that if they didn't address it, this particular thing, it was not because of lack of awareness of the District Clause. For example, this is Judge Wald's testimony. She said, ``We do see Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 as according Congress the power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District as may become the seat of Government of the United States as an obstacle to the unilateral decision by Congress to convert the District into a State.'' Now, they were addressing it in a very different context because when you're talking about statehood, the argument is that because the District clause clearly indicates that they didn't intend it to be a State, you can't just move it in like you would any other State by simple legislation. But the only reason I note that, is just to say everyone was aware of the District clause and people before just didn't think, well, of course we could use this to vote the State in by simple legislation. I think there's a reason for that, and that is, it just hasn't been read that way. It hasn't been read as a way of enacting essentially laws of national scope, laws that can shape the whole structure of our government. In fact, James Madison, who people are constantly invoking him, said that this clause, the District clause, could not be used as a fulcrum basically to enact national legislation. Senator Feingold. Judge Wald? Judge Wald. Well, I was just going to point out that the sentence that he read from my testimony, and I'm aware of it, was in the context of the particular four different alternatives that we were discussing, not one of which--now, it may be that John Harmon and others had in the back of their mind this District clause, but I have to tell you that, in all the discussions that I recall, and we wrote the testimony out of my Office of Legislative Affairs, maybe it was our shortcomings, but this particular option was never discussed. Maybe in some other forum but not on the part of the House hearings I went to, nor inside the Department which looked at my testimony. It was entirely with respect--I think one could go historically and look at a lot of examples, and Senator Leahy raised one, where all of a sudden a clause which has sort of been slumbering there, like the commander in chief clause, suddenly is raised to encompass all sorts of things that none of us had the remotest idea, and that even the Founders had then said Alexander Hamilton--no, that just means-- Senator Feingold. In fact, that's an area where I have quoted Professor Turley. Judge Wald. Yes. That just means he can tell where the troops should go. So I don't think I have this quote right, but the old quote about, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Whatever the right quote is, I don't think you can infer from that that everybody was aware of, and dismissed, the argument which is being pursued here. Senator Feingold. Thank you, Judge. Mr. Ogletree, virtually everyone agrees that the District's lack of representation is manifestly unjust. Given the evolution of voting rights in this country's history and the history of racial discrimination, what is the appropriate way to analyze the constitutionality of legislation intended to correct this injustice? Mr. Ogletree. Senator Feingold, I think it's simple. If we look at our history of the pervasive denial of basic fundamental rights, not based on any sharp constitutional analysis but simply based on race, we will see the irony. Let's take voting rights. African-Americans have been on this land since 1607, even before the Nation was founded, and not until 1965, 300-plus years, 360 years, did African- Americans finally have, universally, the right to vote. It was implied, it was suggested, but it didn't happen until 1965. Even after 1965, in the last 42 years we see as well, with the reauthorization of the 2006 Voting Rights Act, that it wasn't applied equally even after we had a constitutional amendment to say that it was applied. The reality is that there is a difference between what we profess to offer citizens as a right and what we actually offer to African-Americans. It is a pervasive failure of equality. We saw that in civil rights legislation that had to be enacted for African-Americans. We saw that in voting rights, that legislation had to be enacted. We see that in Congress now, even addressing the issue of voting. I think, as you think about this city and the citizens who are poor, who are struggling, who pay the same taxes and fight in the same war and don't get any basic fundamental rights, that the only thing this Congress can do as a moral and legal response is to give them the basic rights, not more, but not less rights than any other citizen in America. Senator Feingold. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate everyone's participation. Anyone want to make any closing remarks, very quickly? Professor Turley? Professor Turley. Thank you. I just wanted to note two things about what was stated previously about the history. First of all, in terms of the ambiguity of Hamilton's amendment on July 22, 1788, Mr. Bress says he has a hard time really seeing how it was relevant, Hamilton said that he objected to the status of the residents and said that ``the inhabitants of said District shall be entitled,'' under his amendment, ``to the like essential rights as the other inhabitants of the United States in general.'' I want to make perfectly clear, he wasn't talking about their having any rights with previous States. He was talking about the fact that they would be disenfranchised, and I fail to see the ambiguity. Madison, who has also been quoted, talked about a municipal legislature for local purposes. He thought that it would be a good idea if the District had ``municipal legislature for local purposes''. Now, finally, if you look at the record you'll see references not just to the composition clause, but also the District clause. When the District clause comes up it is repeatedly referred to as a matter that deals administratively internally with Congress's authority. That argument was made forward by Pendleton, who was the president of the Virginia Ratification Convention, who assured all the other delegates, when they saw the District clause, that it would have no effect outside its borders. It is purely internal. That's why all these examples of, but we can tax them, we can send residents to war, you can do a lot of things. That's where it is majestic: you can do most anything inside the District internally. What you're doing now, is you're using an internal power to affect the status, not of other States, of States, an external application of that District clause. That's where I think the record is clear, that you cannot go beyond that line. Senator Feingold. Judge Wald? Judge Wald. I just want to make a quickie here. It seems to me that the line you draw gets very fuzzy with the Tidewater case because you take the District representation, plurality, given, and you say the District clause and you say that enables us to require Article III Federal courts throughout the country, which normally receive the jurisdiction over its citizens between two different States but not prior to this, not citizens and District residents, to they now must accept the cases of citizens and the District residents. It seems to me that does take the District clause outside of the strictly District residents. I don't know if the Senator will give you reply time. Senator Feingold. Very quickly. Professor Turley. Bless you, Senator. I think if you look at that, you'll see that six of those Justices do not seem to support the position. But if you look at Lawboro in 1820, the Supreme Court says quite clearly, ``DC relinquished the right to representation.'' That is a direct quote of the Supreme Court on the matter. Senator Feingold. Thank you very much. The record for this hearing will remain open for one week, during which time we will accept additional materials from our witnesses today or statements from other individuals on the topic of this hearing. In addition, any written questions that Senators may have for the witnesses should be submitted by one week from now. Again, thank you all for just an excellent job. This hearing is adjourned. 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