Speech #890058064

Unfortunately for good government these amendments were defeated. When the Constitution divided the powers of government between the Federal Government. on the one hand. and the States. on the other. it declared. by section 2 of article I and section 2 of article II of the original Constitution. and by the 10th amendment. and by the 17th amendment. that the power to prescribe qualifications for voting belongs to the States. not to Congress. According to every decision handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States from the beginning of the Republic to this hour. the power which those provisions of the Constitution give to the State to prescribe qualifications for voting include the power to establish and to use a literacy test as one of the qualifications for voting. . The able and distinguished Senator from Mississippi suggested a moment ago that the bill might well be deemed an affront to the Supreme Court of the United States. There is substantial foundation for this suggestion. The bill would rob seven States of their power to establish and use literacy tests without notice. without an opportunity to be heard. without evidence. and without a trial. It would do so notwithstanding the fact that every decision handed down by the Supreme Court on this subject. from the day George Washington took his first oath of office as President of the United States to this very second. has declared that the power to prescribe qualifications for voting. including the power to prescribe a literacy test. belongs to the States under the provisions of the Constitution of the United States. This being so. the proponents of the bill lay themselves open to the charge that they have no confidence whatever in the judicial stability of the Supreme Court. I say this because the bill cannot be adjudged valid by the Court unless it repudiates every decision it has made on the subject.