Opinion of the Court
§3, 1 Stat. 548 (“proof of the several circumstances necessary to entitle the applicants to the benefits of this act, may be taken before … a judge of the supreme or superior court, or the first justice or first judge of the court of common pleas or country court of any state”).
There is more. Shortly after ratification, Congress passed a detailed statute that required state-court judges to gather and certify reports. Act of July 20, 1790, §3, 1 Stat. 132. The Act authorized commanders of ships to request examinations of their vessels from any “justice of the peace of the city, town or place.” Ibid. The judge would order three qualified people to prepare a report on the vessel’s condition, which the judge would review and “endorse.” Ibid. Then, the judge was required to issue an order regarding “whether the said ship or vessel is fit to proceed on the intended voyage; and if not, whether such repairs can be made or deficiencies supplied where the ship or vessel then lays.” Ibid.
These early congressional enactments “provid[e] ‘contemporaneous and weighty evidence’ of the Constitution’s meaning.” Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U. S. 714, 723 (1986). Collectively, they demonstrate that the Constitution does not prohibit the Federal Government from imposing adjudicative tasks on state courts. This makes sense against the backdrop of the Madisonian Compromise: Since Article III established only the Supreme Court and made inferior federal courts optional, Congress could have relied almost entirely on state courts to apply federal law. Printz, 521 U. S., at 907. Had Congress taken that course, it would have had to rely on state courts to perform adjudication-adjacent tasks too.
We now confirm what we suggested in Printz: Congress may impose ancillary recordkeeping requirements related to state-court proceedings without violating the Tenth Amendment. Such requirements do not offload the Federal Government’s responsibilities onto the States, nor do they
