Norton Releases Detailed Testimony from Conservative Scholars - 2/13/2007
Norton Releases Detailed Testimony from Conservative
Scholars Showing D.C. House Vote is Constitutional
February 13, 2007
Washington, DC-- The office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released testimony by two conservative Republican scholars, former Judge Kenneth Starr and Professor Viet Dinh, former Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy under Attorney General John Ashcroft, and a Norton statement refuting a report by Kenneth R. Thomas of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released by an opponent of H.R. 328, doubting the constitutionality of the D.C. House vote bill. Norton said that even minor congressional legislation is often challenged on constitutional grounds, and that such a challenge has always been the expectation for an unprecedented bill such as H.R. 328. Fortunately, Congress does not make such constitutional judgments in advance, she said, but leaves that to the judicial branch charged with that responsibility. "I would rather go to the Supreme Court of the United States with the solid, thoughtful and extensive testimony of Judge Starr and Professor Dinh, distinguished scholars seldom on my side on constitutional issue, than with the report prepared by Mr. Thomas, of the CRS staff," Norton said.
Starr's testimony can be found at https://www.dcvote.org/trellis/today/kstarr062304.pdf and Dinh's at https://www.dcvote.org/trellis/today/vietdinh112004.pdf. The statements in PDF also can be emailed or faxed upon request. In addition, following is a Norton office news release of February 12, 2007 quoting from both the Starr and Dinh testimony.
We are not concerned about the constitutionality of H.R. 328. No similar case has ever been considered by any court, although the Tidewater case does create a favorable precedent. An unprecedented bill always raises constitutional issues, and we have always indicated that, not surprisingly, constitutional views on a novel bill like H.R. 328 are divided. However following extensive hearings before two committees in the House of Representatives that heard both sides of all the constitutional issues, we believe that the weight of constitutional opinion is with the District and H.R. 328. Two well known conservative constitutional scholars, former D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Kenneth Starr and former Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy under Attorney General Ashcroft Professor Viet Dinh, have extensively analyzed the D.C. vote bill and have offered detailed testimony that H.R. 328 is constitutional. Professor Dinh's 23 page testimony, finds, "We conclude that Congress has ample constitutional authority to enact the District of Columbia Fairness in Representation Act. In few, if any, other areas does the Constitution grant any broader authority to Congress to legislate." Tidewater, the major case on which both sides rely, was closely analyzed by Kenneth Starr. He concluded that "The Tidewater holding confirms what is now the law: the Constitution's use of the term ‘State' in Article III cannot mean ‘and not of the District of Columbia.' Identical logic supports legislation to enfranchise the District's voters: the use of the word ‘State' in Article I cannot bar Congress from exercising its plenary authority to extend the franchise to the District's residents."