Roberts, C. J., dissenting
majority’s preferred definition, “the Legislature” referred to an institutional body of representatives, not the people at large.
Any ambiguity about the meaning of “the Legislature” is removed by other founding era sources. “[E]very state constitution from the Founding Era that used the term legislature defined it as a distinct multimember entity comprised of representatives.” Morley, The Intratextual Independent “Legislature” and the Elections Clause, 109 Nw. U. L. Rev. Online 131, 147, and n. 101 (2015) (citing eleven State Constitutions). The Federalist Papers are replete with references to “legislatures” that can only be understood as referring to representative institutions. E.g., The Federalist No. 27, pp. 174–175 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) (describing “the State legislatures” as “select bodies of men”); id., No. 60, at 368 (contrasting “the State legislatures” with “the people”). Noah Webster’s heralded American Dictionary of the English Language defines “legislature” as “[t]he body of men in a state or kingdom, invested with power to make and repeal laws.” 2 An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). It continues, “The legislatures of most of the states in America … consist of two houses or branches.” Ibid. (emphasis deleted).
I could go on, but the Court has said this before. As we put it nearly a century ago, “Legislature” was “not a term of uncertain meaning when incorporated into the Constitution.” Hawke, 253 U. S., at 227. “What it meant when adopted it still means for the purpose of interpretation.” Ibid. “A Legislature” is “the representative body which ma[kes] the laws of the people.” Ibid.; see Smiley, 285 U. S., at 365 (relying on this definition); Colorado Gen. Assembly v. Salazar, 541 U. S. 1093, 1095 (2004) (Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (same).
