Roberts, C. J., dissenting
single instance in which the identity of these actors changes as they exercise different functions.
The majority attempts to draw support from precedent, but our cases only further undermine its position. In Hawke, this Court considered the meaning of “the Legislatur[e]” in Article V, which outlines the process for ratifying constitutional amendments. The Court concluded that “Legislature” meant “the representative body which ma[kes] the laws of the people.” 253 U. S., at 227. The Court then explained that “[t]he term is often used in the Constitution with this evident meaning.” Ibid. (emphasis added). The Court proceeded to list other constitutional provisions that assign different functions to the “Legislature,” just as the majority does today. Id., at 227–228; see ante, at 19, n. 17.
Unlike the majority today, however, the Court in Hawke never hinted that the meaning of “Legislature” varied across those different provisions because they assigned different functions. To the contrary, the Court drew inferences from the Seventeenth Amendment and its predecessor, Article I, §3—in which “the Legislature” played an electoral function—to define the “Legislature” in Article V, which assigned it a ratification function. See 253 U. S., at 228. The Court concluded that “Legislature” refers to a representative body, whatever its function. As the Court put it, “There can be no question that the framers of the Constitution clearly understood and carefully used the terms in which that instrument referred to the action of the legislatures of the States. When they intended that direct action by the people should be had they were no less accurate in the use of apt phraseology to carry out such purpose.” Ibid. (citing Art. I, §2).
Smiley, the leading precedent on the meaning of “the Legislature” in the Elections Clause, reaffirmed the definition announced in Hawke. In Smiley, the petitioner argued—as the Commission does here—that “the Legisla-
