vote in committee. Thus, it is obvious that District residents do not receive the most fundamental federal right of citizenship upon which this country is based the right to full - the District of Columbia do not receive full representation in Congress, they are subject to the same laws and taxation rates as citizens who have a voice in Congress. How ironic that the nation's capital city does not afford its citizens the fundamental benefits of democracy! Not only is statehood desirable to the residents of the District of Columbia, but statehood would be beneficial to the country as a whole. If the District were a state, Congress would be relieved from overseeing the purely local affairs of the city which would free time to spend on crucial national or international matters. Statehood supports the "principle of local government of local affairs embodied in American legal philosophy under the concept of states rights. Behind the idea of states rights and local-self-government lies the conviction that matters of local concern can best be determined and most efficiently managed by those most directly affected."45 The people of the District of Columbia wish to become the citizens of the state of New Columbia. They have worked long and hard. We must meet the challenge of statehood and put to rest a 441d. 45H.R. Rep. No. 624, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. reprinted in 1958 U.S. Code Cong. & Ad. News 2933, 2941. concern a colleague described when I asked her what she thought about statehood for the District of Columbia. She recalled an incident of years earlier in which a fellow judicial law clerk answering the question "Why was the District not a state?" replied simply, "It's too dark." If it is too dark, it is dark from the rationalizations of narrow constitutional technocrats, dark from the choking tentacles of legislative antiquities, and dark from the fundamentally negative attitudes of many who acquiesce to long standing racial misconceptions. Members of Congress, representatives of the people, you are in a position to move District of Columbia statehood to a reality. I believe that you must and you will move to complete the simple promise of this Republic. Grant the District of Columbia statehood and let the fifty-first star of our constellation shine with liberty and justice for all of our citizens. Mr. FAUNTROY. And I must admit that your students certainly ought to be proud of their professor. I hope that you will make this text of your testimony required reading for your students in the years to come. And I hope that the wisdom that you've outlined here will be followed by the Congress in making this a truly historic series of hearings that we've had underway. I just have three or four questions of you. As you know, article I, section 8, clause 17, of the Constitution gives Congress the power of exclusive legislative authority over the District. If this power is exclusive, could it not be argued that, therefore, Congress can do with the District whatever it wishes? If it cannot, then the power really isn't exclusive. And if it can, cannot then the words of limitation-must be read into the exclusive powers clause itself. Would you agree? Mr. COCHRAN. Yes, I would, personally. Uh-huh. Mr. FAUNTROY. If the powers are exclusive, then there isn't— isn't there at least an argument that the Congress can also, therefore, rewrite the proposed constitution, assuming, of course, that ultimately the people of the District must decide whether to accept such a rewrite of certain conditions? Mr. COCHRAN. And as I attempted to suggest in the testimony, it seemed to me, if Congress were to invert that procedure, it's precisely that Mr. FAUNTROY. Uh-huh. Mr. COCHRAN [continuing]. An inversion of the usual procedure. But I suppose, on the face of it, it would-it would not be unconstitutional to follow that procedure. Mr. FAUNTROY. In your testimony, you mentioned that under the Constitution a minimum of 60,000 free inhabitants is required to become a State. Does that not aid us in our historically explaining why the Congress and the Founding Fathers did not choose to make us a State at the beginning? Mr. COCHRAN. Well Mr. FAUNTROY. We had only about 5,000 people. Mr. COCHRAN. I'm not sure I quite follow the very last part of that. Mr. FAUNTROY. Well- Mr. COCHRAN. You said Mr. FAUNTROY. One of the things that I thought was valuable from your historical treatment, which you did not, of course, go into here, and that's why I wanted you to make sure that it's in the record completely and that the students Mr. COCHRAN. Uh-huh. Mr. FAUNTROY [continuing]. Have an opportunity to study it. But you mentioned that at the time of the founding of the country 60,000 residents were required to make up a State. Mr. COCHRAN. Uh-huh. Mr. FAUNTROY. And because we had only five in the area called the District of Columbia, it—— Mr. COCHRAN. Well- Mr. FAUNTROY [continuing]. It never even occurred to the- Mr. FAUNTROY [continuing]. Founders. Mr. COCHRAN. Well, of course, I tell you what really occurred to the Founding Fathers, and, of course, your own comments in a previous hearing led me along the way there, some 4 or 5 years before the Constitution was even ratified, when the Nation's Capital was at Philadelphia, there was a-the unpaid Federal soldiers were a little bit upset over not having been paid, and decided to raise a bit of cain there in Philadelphia. And the Pennsylvania militia was not particularly interested in coming to their rescue. And the Members of the Congress got to be at a bit of a huff, and were concerned about their safety and the safety of the seat of the Nation's Government. And it seems that there, along with some other events, was a developing new idea, a conception, and that was the notion of a federally owned Nation's Capital. And, indeed, by the adoption of the Constitution, some 4 years after that, that idea had found its way into the Constitution, and hence the birth of the District. But, of course, there's more than ample historical indication that there was a-from the birth of the idea, that was the notion that there would at least be some, a certain amount of home rule and self-governance, though, arguably, somewhat limited. But even when the idea was fresh and new and no one dreamed of this wonderful New Columbia that we have around us now, that the notion never was that the people who resided therein ought not to participate in the decisions which govern their lives. Mr. FAUNTROY. Uh-huh. I particularly appreciate the light you shed on the question of whether Maryland has a role in the District's statehood process. In the vernacular of the legal profession, the State of Maryland ceded the land upon which the District sits in fee simple absolute. And that was a very significant point made by you, and I appreciate that. Mr. COCHRAN. And that is absolutely no exaggeration. That is precisely it. Mr. FAUNTROY. Thank you so very much. Mr. COCHRAN. Thank you very much. Mr. FAUNTROY. All right. May I ask if Professor Saltzburg has arrived? He's due here by 11 o'clock. We will certainly call him when he arrives. May I move on to Prof. Philip Schrag, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. We're so pleased to have you Professor Schrag. And I have reviewed your testimony as well and look forward to your presentation. STATEMENT BY PHILIP G. SCHRAG, PROFESSOR OF LAW, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER Mr. SCHRAG. Mr. Chairman, I'll read a portion of my testimony and submit a fuller statement for the record. Mr. FAUNTROY. Yes. Let's enter the entire statement in the record. And you may proceed with your summary. Mr. Chairman, my name is Philip Schrag. I am a professor of law at Georgetown University, where I am also director of the center for applied legal studies. In 1982, I served as an elected delegate from ward 3 of the District of Columbia to the District's Statehood Constitutional Convention. And since then I have written a political history of the convention, a book entitled, "Behind the Scenes: The Politics of a Constitutional Convention," which was published by Georgetown University Press in 1985. Mr. FAUNTROY. Uh-huh. Mr. SCHRAG. I have long been convinced that the District of Columbia's political status is a development unanticipated by the founders of our country, embarrassing to the Nation, and grossly unfair to the District's 600,000 residents. The founders could never have anticipated that the tiny square of Potomac swampland which they selected to be the Nation's Capital would some day have a greater population than that of several States of the Union. If Hamilton and Madison had thought that they were disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of citizens, I doubt very much that they would have denied to District residents the opportunity to choose voting representatives in Congress. Similarly, I doubt that the founders of our republic would have deliberately denied large numbers of citizens such fundamental political rights as the power to select the members of their judicial branch of government. Last August, the time expired for ratification of the constitutional amendment proposed by Congress to provide the District with voting representatives on Capitol Hill. This amendment was a halfway measure to begin with because it would not have provided the District with full self-government over local affairs. District legislation would still have been subject to reversal by Congress, even in areas where similar action by States would be final. And the District's budget would still have been subject to congressional approval, and through that approval process subject to appropriation riders, an ordeal to which no State is subjected. But passage of even this halfway measure has proved to be a political impossibility. And it is generally conceded that retrocession of the District to the State of Maryland, which would give District residents both home rule and voting representation in Congress, is equally implausible. Therefore, statehood is the only way in which the people of the District can be afforded the same rights as those enjoyed by all other Americans. As you know, in 1982, a statehood constitutional convention proposed a constitution for the District as part of the process of achieving statehood. People of the District ratified the constitution, and Members of Congress, including yourself, introduced statehood admission bills. But some questions had been raised by some of the statehood convention delegates, by some Members of Congress, and by some members of the public about certain provisions in the proposed State constitution. |