As a resident of Washington, D.C., I was sorry to see Jeff Jacoby’s column “The Constitution says no to D.C. statehood” (Ideas, June 21). Jacoby argues that it would violate the Constitution to shrink the federal district to a tiny part of central D.C., leaving the rest of the city as a new, 51st state.
But D.C. has been changed in this way before, with no constitutional amendment needed: The District of Columbia used to be 100 square miles; today, it’s only about 68 square miles. What happened? A large chunk of the city was retroceded in 1847 (it is now a part of Virginia). This is perfectly constitutional, because the Constitution sets a maximum size for the capital district (“not exceeding ten Miles square”), not a minimum size.