Page:Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm’n.pdf/9

Opinion of the Court

not only to enact ordinary laws, but also to amend the State’s Constitution. J. Dinan, The American State Con­stitutional Tradition 62 (2006). By 1920, the people in 19 States had reserved for themselves the power to initiate ordinary lawmaking, and, in 13 States, the power to initi­ate amendments to the State’s Constitution. Id., at 62, and n. 132, 94, and n. 151. Those numbers increased to 21 and 18, respectively, by the close of the 20th century. Ibid.^[1]

B

For the delegates to Arizona’s constitutional convention, direct lawmaking was a “principal issu[e].” J. Leshy, The Arizona State Constitution 8–9 (2d ed. 2013) (hereinafter Leshy). By a margin of more than three to one, the people of Arizona ratified the State’s Constitution, which included, among lawmaking means, initiative and referendum provisions. Id., at 14–16, 22. In the runup to Arizona’s ad­mission to the Union in 1912, those provisions generated no controversy. Id., at 22.

In particular, the Arizona Constitution “establishes the electorate [of Arizona] as a coordinate source of legisla­tion” on equal footing with the representative legislative body. Queen Creek Land & Cattle Corp. v. Yavapai Cty. Bd. of Supervisors, 108 Ariz. 449, 451, 501 P. 2d 391, 393 (1972); Cave Creek Unified School Dist. v. Ducey, 233 Ariz. 1, 4, 308 P. 3d 1152, 1155 (2013) (“The legislature and

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1. The people’s sovereign right to incorporate themselves into a State’s lawmaking apparatus, by reserving for themselves the power to adopt laws and to veto measures passed by elected representatives, is one this Court has ranked a nonjusticiable political matter. Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Oregon, 223 U. S. 118 (1912) (rejecting challenge to referendum mounted under Article IV, §4’s undertaking by the United States to “guarantee to every State in th[e] Union a Repub­lican Form of Government”). But see New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 185 (1992) (“[P]erhaps not all claims under the Guarantee Clause present nonjusticiable political questions.”).