who would in other States be admitted. For instance, fifteen States now allow aliens (i.e. foreigners not yet naturalized) to vote; and any State which should admit women to vote at its own State elections (as Wyoming now does) would thereby admit them also to vote at congressional elections.[1] The only restriction imposed on State discretion in this respect is that of the fifteenth amendment, which forbids any person to be deprived of suffrage, on "account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude."[2]
II. The Federal Constitution deprives the States of certain powers they would otherwise enjoy. Some of these, such as that of making treaties, are obviously unpermissible, and such as the State need not regret.[3] Others, however, seriously restrain their daily action. They are liable to be sued in the Federal courts by another State or by a foreign Power. They cannot, except with the consent of Congress, tax exports or imports, or in any case pass a law impairing the obligation of a contract. They must surrender fugitives from the justice of any other State. Whether they have transgressed any of these restrictions is a question for the courts of law, and, if not in the first instance, yet always in the last resort a question for the Federal Supreme court. If it is decided that they have transgressed, their act, be it legislative or executive, is null and void.[4]
- ↑ So in some States tribal Indians are permitted to vote. It is odd that the votes of persons who are not citizens of the United States might, in a State where parties are nearly equal, turn the choice of presidential electors in that State, and thereby perhaps turn the presidential election in the Union.
- ↑ The Constitutions of some States retain the old exclusion of negroes from the suffrage, and three exclude natives of China; but these provisions are overridden by the fifteenth constitutional amendment.
- ↑ As the States had not been accustomed to act as sovereign commonwealths in international affairs, they yielded this right to the National government without demur; whereas Swiss history shows the larger cantons to have been unwilling to drop the practice of sending their own envoys to foreign powers and making bargains on their own behalf.
- ↑ Mr. Justice Miller observes (Centennial Address at Philadelphia) that "at no time since the formation of the Union has there been a period when there were not to be found on the statute books of some of the States acts passed in violation of the provisions of the Constitution regarding commerce, acts imposing taxes and other burdens upon the free interchange of commodities, discriminating against the productions of other States, and attempting to establish regulations of commerce, which the Constitution says shall only be done by Congress." All such acts are of course held invalid by the courts when questioned before them.
It has very recently been held that a State cannot forbid a common carrier
