Article IV, Section 1: Full Faith and Credit Clause: Most of the original Constitution focuses on

creating the federal government, defining its relationship to the states and the people at large.
Article IV addresses something different: the states’ relations with each other, sometimes called
“horizontal federalism.” Its first section, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, requires every state, as
part of a single nation, to give a certain measure of respect to every other state’s laws and
institutions.
 The first part of the Clause, largely borrowed from the Articles of Confederation, requires
each state to pay attention to the other states’ statutes, public records, and court decisions.
The second sentence lets Congress decide how those materials can be proved in court and
what effect they will have. The current implementing statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1738, declares that
these materials should receive “the same full faith and credit” in each state that they have in
the state “from which they are taken.”
These broad statements of principle don’t always translate well to specifics. States will take note of
each other’s public records, but they aren’t always expected to give these records precisely the
same effect that they have at home. (A fishing license from one state doesn’t give you the right to
fish anywhere else.)
The Clause and federal implementing statute also have a relatively light impact on state statutory
law. As the Supreme Court has recognized, when two states’ laws are in conflict, it’s impossible for
both of them to give effect to each other’s law at the same time. Alaska Packers Association v.
Industrial Accident Commission (1935). In situations where either state’s laws could plausibly apply
(say, a car accident in Florida between two residents of New York, where the two states have
different ideas about how to parcel out damages), the Clause exerts relatively little force. Under the
prevailing standard in Allstate Insurance Co. v. Hague (1981) and Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts
(1985), depending on where the case is filed, either court can apply its own state’s law to the
dispute—so long as that state has “a significant contact or significant aggregation of contacts,
creating state interests, such that choice of its law is neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair.”

Once a court has made a decision, though, the Clause has real teeth. So long as a state court has
authority over the case and the parties, its judgments will conclusively determine the parties’ rights
in every other state—even if it might be wrong on the law, and even if the judgment violates public
policy in the state where it’s enforced. One state’s judgment on a gambling debt can still be
collected in another state where gambling is a crime, as the Court established in Fauntleroy v. Lum
(1908).
In recent years, the most controversial applications of the Full Faith and Credit Clause have
involved family law. Each state has slightly different laws about marriage, and marriages
themselves typically aren’t treated as judgments receiving nationwide effect. Until recently, same-
sex marriages formed in one state weren’t always recognized elsewhere. Congress attempted to
use its power under the Clause to slow the recognition of same-sex marriages by passing the
Defense of Marriage Act—1 U.S.C. § 7; 28 U.S.C. § 1738C—but this was rendered obsolete by the
Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). Other marriages are still treated
differently in different states, which have conflicting rules about marriages by young people or
between close relatives. But because divorces often take the form of court judgments, they usually
do receive nationwide effect, so long as the issuing court had the necessary authority over the
parties. Congress has rarely used its power under the Clause, but it has passed statutes clarifying
which courts may issue orders on child custody—when a family is spread across multiple states.
Article IV, Section 2: Movement Of Persons Throughout the Union: Our Constitution’s Fourth
Article is devoted to the relations between the states and the Union. Section 2 of that Article sets
forth three Clauses, each of which concerns the movement of persons throughout the Union.
-The first of these, the Privileges and Immunities Clause, stipulates that the citizens of each state
shall enjoy the “privileges and immunities of citizens” in the other states. Conversely, where the
interstate traveller is a fugitive from criminal justice, the second provision—the Extradition Clause—
requires the person’s forcible rendition to the state where the alleged crime occurred. Finally, the
Fugitive Slave Clause (now obsolete) extended this rule of coercive rendition to interstate fugitives
from slavery—that is, fugitives from injustice.

Unlike the other clauses of Article IV, the provisions in Section 2 vest in Congress no express
enforcement power or duty. Instead, each uses a passive-voice verb—“shall be entitled” (in the first
clause) and “shall be delivered up” (in the second and third clauses)—without any clear
identification of the authority or authorities who are to ensure this entitlement or this rendition. The
provisions mention only the persons entitled to the benefit: the citizen, under the Privileges and
Immunities Clause; the executive of the state of the alleged crime, under the Extradition Clause;
and, although not named as such, the slaveholder under the Fugitive Slave Clause.

Before the Civil War, the Fugitive Slave Clause and the Privileges and Immunities Clause
occasioned intense national controversy. Americans disagreed about both the scope of these
provisions and the degree to which the federal government had some implied power or duty to
enforce them. These legal disputes, in turn, reflected deep political divisions on questions related to
slavery, race, and citizenship.
Since the Civil War, Article IV, Section 2 has been largely uncontroversial. By abolishing slavery
and securing black citizenship, the Reconstruction Amendments largely resolved the antebellum
disputes arising under Article IV. Today jurists largely agree as to the central meaning of the three
clauses.

The Privileges and Immunities Clause: According to the currently prevailing interpretation, the
Privileges and Immunities Clause entitles a citizen of one state, while sojourning in other states, to
equal treatment with local citizens. That is to say, the Clause prohibits discrimination on the basis of
a citizen’s state of residence. The antidiscrimination rule extends to certain fundamental rights that a
state may afford its own citizens, including rights of travel, residence, trade, employment, property,
and others. Still, despite the mention of “all privileges and immunities,” some rights fall outside the
antidiscrimination rule; the states remain free to discriminate in favor of their own citizens as to the
political rights of voting and office-holding, and non-fundamental activities like recreational hunting
and fishing.

The adoption of the Privileges and Immunities Clause addressed a key problem inherent in the new
federal system. On July 4, 1776, the representatives of “one People” had declared that the thirteen
“united Colonies” were “free and independent states.” From the beginning, the United States was
marked by a tension between unity and multiplicity: one united people but thirteen independent
states. And from the beginning, this tension posed many challenges, including the threat that the
several states’ independence would turn former fellow British subjects into citizens of thirteen
separate republics—mutual aliens, rather than one people.
To meet this danger, the Articles of Confederation included a provision expressly designed “to
secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in
this Union.” By this rule, the “free inhabitants” of each state would not be foreigners vis-à-vis the
others, but instead “entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.”
These privileges included the freedom of “ingress and regress” and “all the privileges of trade and
commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof
respectively.” This promise was, as Alexander Hamilton would note, the “very basis of the Union.”

With a few modifications, the Fourth Article of the Constitution retained this provision from the
Articles of Confederation. For the most part, it generated little discussion and debate during the
Founding era—probably because it was inherently conservative, preserving an existing
understanding of interstate norms, and because there were few substantive disputes among states
(with the notable exception of those regarding slavery).

One omission, however, did prompt some modest dissent. Under the Articles, the citizen had
enjoyed an express exemption from any local legislation that would “prevent the removal of property
imported into any State” back to the citizen’s home state. The probable purpose of this provision
was to protect nonresident slaveholders against local antislavery law. Over the objection of South
Carolina’s Charles Pinckney and some other slaveholding delegates, the Convention approved the
omission of this guarantee.

Decades later, slavery would provoke more intense conflict over the interpretation of the Privileges
and Immunities Clause. Two main disputes developed and intensified in the decades before the
Civil War. First, as northern states grew increasingly intolerant of slavery, many slaveowners
insisted that the Clause secured what its drafters had omitted: a right to travel in the free states,
exempt from local antislavery law. Some northern courts agreed, but other authorities replied that
traveling slaveowners were entitled only to equality with local citizens and could thus lose any
property right immediately upon the slave’s entry into the state.

Second, as southern and western states became increasingly intolerant of free blacks’ residence,
many objected that new laws restricting the rights of free people of color violated their citizenship
rights. But authorities in the South and West generally upheld these racist policies primarily on the
claim that free blacks were not Americans and did not qualify as “citizens” under Article IV, but also
on the interpretation that even if citizens, free people of color were entitled to no more than the
meager rights (if any) the local laws afforded to native “negro” populations.

On the eve of the Civil War, a third, related dispute arose. Increasing southern intolerance of
antislavery opinion effectively prevented antislavery Americans from traveling in the South.
Southerners defended these policies’ consistency with Article IV on interstate-equality grounds, but
some antislavery northerners argued that the Constitution entitled citizens to the right to travel and
even to express their opinions in every state of the Union, local anti-anti-slavery policies to the
contrary notwithstanding. According to Abraham Lincoln and many other Republicans, Congress
had as much power to secure these entitlements as to enforce the Fugitive Slave Clause.
The Extradition Clause: The Extradition Clause provides for the return of persons charged with a
crime in one state who fled to another state. In some ways, the extradition clause was the mirror
image of the Privileges and Immunities Clause. The “flip side” of interstate citizenship was interstate
cooperation, whereby each state would help to enforce the criminal jurisdiction of the other states.
Accordingly, the Articles of Confederation mandated the interstate rendition of fugitives “from
justice”—that is, from criminal accusation, process, or punishment.

Article IV, Section 2 likewise provided for the return of persons charged with a crime in one state
who fled to another state, with only minor changes from the version in the Articles. The Extradition
Clause provided that the “executive Authority of the State from which he fled” should demand the
rendition of the fugitive, so a copy of the indictment or sworn affidavit certified by the governor was
required for extradition. However, because the provision was not self-executing, it required
legislation to put it into effect. This became evident when Virginia refused to “deliver up” to
Pennsylvania three fugitives from justice who had been accused of kidnapping a free black man,
John Davis, just one year after the adoption of the Constitution. This controversy led Congress to
include an extradition clause in what became known as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. The
language of this legislation mirrored that of Article IV, Section 2 but declared it the “duty of the
executive authority” to act on an extradition request.

Although many fewer conflicts arose regarding the Extradition Clause than the Fugitive Slave
Clause, those that did all had to do with slavery. One such case set a precedent that was not
overturned for over a century: Kentucky v. Dennison (1860). In that case, the Ohio governor,
William Dennison, Jr., refused to extradite a fugitive from Kentucky who had been charged with
helping a girl escape from slavery. The court ruled that although the governor had a duty to return
the fugitive from justice, he could not be compelled to do so by a writ of mandamus. This precedent
was not overturned until the 1987 case of Puerto Rico v. Branstad.

Today, the Uniform Extradition Act has been adopted in 48 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin
Islands (but not in Mississippi and South Carolina). The Extradition Clause covers “Treason, Felony,
or other Crime,” and the Supreme Court has interpreted the crimes for which a person is subject to
extradition very broadly, to include every offense punishable by law of the state in which the offense
was committed. It is not a requirement that the accused consciously fled to avoid prosecution, only
that the person did in fact flee from justice.
The Fugitive Slave Clause: The third clause of Article IV, Section 2 is known as the “Fugitive
Slave Clause.” It is one of five clauses in the Constitution that dealt directly with slavery, although it
does not use the word “slave,” and instead refers to “person[s] held to Service or Labour.”
Compared to the Slave Trade Clause and the Three-Fifths Clause, the Fugitive Slave Clause
occasioned very little debate at the time it was adopted, but fierce conflicts arose about its scope
and enforcement in the decades that followed.
The Clause was adopted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 on the motion of Pierce Butler
and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina. In opposition, James Wilson of Pennsylvania disagreed
because “this would oblige the Executive of the State to [return fugitive slaves], at the public
expence.” The proposal was withdrawn, but then adopted a day later with no dispute. The only
response recorded was Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman’s sarcastic comment that he “saw no
more propriety in the public seizing and surrendering a slave or servant, than a horse.”
Over the course of the Constitutional Convention issues relating to slavery complicated nearly every
debate and the importance of slavery became increasingly evident. In the Convention’s final actions
on slavery-related matters, the language of the Fugitive Slave Clause was discussed and amended.
The Committee of Detail reported the language “No person legally held to service or labour in one
state escaping into another shall . . . be discharged from such service or labour . . . .” The
Convention substituted the term “under the laws thereof” after the word “state” for the term “legally.”
The delegates made this change to satisfy those who sought to distance themselves from the
institution of slavery and make clear that it was a local institution only in certain states. This was a
small triumph for those who were uneasy about slavery, but it had no practical effect.

At the end of the day, since the word “slavery” was never mentioned in the document, northerners
could argue that the Constitution did not recognize the legality of slavery. However, southerners
such as General Cotesworth Pinckney argued, “We have obtained a right to recover our slaves in
whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before.” Ultimately, the
issue of slavery’s constitutional status was far from settled.

Like the other two Clauses, the Fugitive Slave Clause did not provide for any particular enforcement
powers. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, with almost no opposition or debate, to
provide for enforcement. The Act authorized a slaveowner or his agents to cross a state line, seize
an alleged fugitive slave, take the slave before any judge or local magistrate, and there, upon proof
of ownership, receive a certificate entitling him to return home with his captive. Financial penalties
could result for interfering with the recovery of a fugitive. The law’s evidentiary requirements were
loose and oral testimony was sufficient; it did not provide for normal legal processes like trial by jury.
It gave the alleged fugitive no protection against self-incrimination and no assurance that he could
testify on his own behalf. It also did not specify a time limitation, so slaves could be claimed many
years after the alleged escape.

From the 1830s until 1850, many northern states attempted to provide some legal protections for
escaped slaves who faced potential recapture in the North by passing personal liberty laws. These
laws forbade the participation of state authorities or the use of state property in the capture of a
fugitive. Other laws provided runaway slaves with procedural protections that were not specified in
the Act, such as trial by jury and the right to testify. By and large, however, a constitutional
settlement prevailed in both northern and southern states: states had the right to determine the legal
status of their own inhabitants, including defining people as slaves and authorizing their re-
enslavement if they ran away to a free state; but states also had the authority to punish a kidnapper
for reducing a free person to slavery, and to define procedures to protect free people from
kidnapping.
Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) tested the constitutionality of the Pennsylvania personal liberty law.
Edward Prigg had been convicted on kidnapping charges in Pennsylvania for taking a recaptured
fugitive slave back to Maryland without obtaining the required certificate. The Court found that the
Pennsylvania statute under which Prigg had been indicted was in conflict with the federal law of
1793 and with the Constitution. Justice Story’s decision was based on his belief that the Fugitive
Slave Clause “constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not
have been formed.” Therefore, “seizure and recaption” of fugitive slaves was a basic constitutional
right and the states could not pass laws interfering with the right. The opinion held that only
Congress had the power to pass legislation implementing the Fugitive Slave Clause. This judicial
nationalism threatened to upend the old constitutional settlement.
As sectional conflict increased, the constitutional settlement that had prevailed among the states
began to break down. As the Missouri court opined in Scott v. Emerson, “Times are not as they
were when the former decisions on this subject were made.” Northern and southern courts stopped
extending “comity,” or respect to one another’s decisions. The Compromise of 1850 included an
even more stringent new Fugitive Slave Act, in which suspected fugitives were denied the right to
trial by jury and the right to testify in their own behalf. The Act made rendition of fugitive slaves a
federal affair, forbidding state officers to interfere with federal marshals and making it a criminal
offense for private citizens to do so. Nevertheless, abolitionists in northern states formed vigilance
committees to ward off slave catchers and kidnappers, and conducted spectacular rescues.
Northern juries refused to convict rescuers. When the high courts in Wisconsin and Ohio held the
1850 Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional in 1854, they did so with broad popular support. Although
the U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned the decisions in 1859, in Ableman v. Booth, by that
time it was quite clear that North and South were on a collision course.

At the heart of these antebellum controversies was a more fundamental disagreement: what is the
relationship between slavery and the Constitution? Did the Constitution condone, support and
protect slavery, or was it silent on slavery’s legality, allowing for the institution to wither away in the
future?
Pro-slavery southerners were virtually unanimous in asserting the centrality of slavery to the
Constitution. Besides celebrating the undeniably pro-slavery provisions, they asserted that one of
the fundamental privileges of American citizens was the right to travel, and even stay for long
periods of time, anywhere in the Union with their enslaved human property.
Even among anti-slavery advocates, there were sharp disagreements about how to interpret the
Fugitive Slave Clause, and the slave clauses of the Constitution as a general matter. Taking one
extreme view, William Lloyd Garrison described the Constitution as “the pro-slavery, war
sanctioning Constitution of the United States.” This view had much in common with southern views
on the Constitution. Garrison declared the Constitution to be “a covenant with death, an agreement
with hell,” precisely for the reason that it did sanction slavery.
By contrast, Frederick Douglass held a minority viewpoint within anti-slavery politics based on a
textualist reading of the Constitution. Douglass argued that the Constitution made slavery
illegitimate everywhere, in the South as well as in the territories. He argued that the Constitution
does not explicitly condone slavery and the “WRITTEN Constitution” should not be “interpreted in
light of a SECRET and UNWRITTEN understanding of its framers.” Douglass believed that the
federal government could abolish slavery because it violated the Fifth Amendment due process
guarantee, the Article IV guarantee of republican government, and other clauses of the Constitution.
He also made originalist arguments about the Founders’ intentions to have slavery gradually wither
away. By this understanding, the Constitution had become corrupted by acquiescence in pro-
slavery custom, but the Constitution’s anti-slavery character could be redeemed by federal action.
He also relied on a natural law interpretation of the Constitution, arguing that it should be read in
conjunction with the Declaration of Independence and given the meaning that best expressed the
ideals of the Declaration.
A third understanding was exemplified by Lincoln and other moderately antislavery Americans. The
Constitution did indeed contain concessions to slavery. But these were compromises, not principles.
The Constitution’s principles were fully compatible with the eventual abolition of slavery whether by
state legislation and federal territorial legislation, and, if necessary because of minority
intransigence, eventual constitutional amendment. As William Seward argued, slavery was merely
“temporary, accidental, partial and incongruous,” but freedom was “perpetual, organic, universal . . .
in harmony with the Constitution of the United States.”
For the most part, the Reconstruction Amendments resolved these Article IV controversies. By
abolishing slavery throughout the Union, the Thirteenth Amendment nullified any person’s right to
enjoy the rendition of fugitive slaves or to travel with slaves. And the Fourteenth Amendment
replaced the Privileges and Immunities Clause as a more solid basis for protecting all Americans—
regardless of race, state of residency, or otherwise—against state infringement of their fundamental
rights as citizens.

Nonetheless, the antebellum debates as to slavery’s place in the Constitution have to some extent
continued to this day. In 1987, Justice Thurgood Marshall gave a speech cautioning against the
“flag-waving fervor” of the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution, explaining that the 1787
Constitution was “defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and
momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect
for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.” Then-Assistant
Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds responded in a speech later that month that it was
wrong to think that there “are two constitutions, the one of 1787” and the one of today. Even if the
Constitution acknowledged or lent support to slavery, that support was necessary to the political
compromise that secured its ratification. These debates about whether the 1787 Constitution did or
did not support slavery, based on the wording and adoption of the slave-related clauses, contribute
to one’s views of the Constitution as a living, changing document or one that still means what it did
in 1787.

3) The Admissions Clause: This Clause affords Congress the power to admit new states. Most of
the discussion at the Constitutional Convention focused on the latter, limiting, portion of the
Clause—providing that new states can be carved out of or formed from existing states only with the
consent of those existing states. Some Convention delegates objected to this provision on the
ground that, because several of the existing large states laid claims to vast swathes of western
territories and other lands, those states would never consent to form new states in those territories,
and thus the large states would only become larger and more powerful over time. But the prevailing
sentiment at the Convention was that a political society cannot be split apart against its will.

While the consent requirement garnered the most discussion at the Framing, it has come into play
only a handful of times in American history, such as when Massachusetts consented to the
formation of Maine. Most intriguingly, Virginia was treated as consenting to the formation of West
Virginia at the outset of the Civil War, even though it was actually a breakaway, pro-Union province
of Virginia that declared itself to be the lawful government of Virginia and then purported to give
“Virginia’s” consent to the creation of the new state of West Virginia—which was to occupy that
same breakaway corner of Virginia.

The opening portion of the Clause—granting Congress the general power to admit new states—has
played a far more significant role in American history. Only thirteen states ratified the Constitution
pursuant to Article VII. All of the remaining thirty-seven states were subsequently admitted to the
Union by Congress pursuant to this power.
This power is thus an important one. And yet the Constitution provides almost no guidance as to
how Congress should exercise it, nor does the Constitution impose any other express limits on it.
Neither is there much guidance in the Framing history about its meaning or scope. Accordingly,
much of the practical meaning of the Admissions Clause must be drawn either from caselaw
interpreting the Clause or from the practice of Congress in admitting states, beginning with Vermont
in 1791 and ending with Alaska and Hawaii in 1959.
New states have generally been admitted after a period of territorial government, during which
Congress and the President have broad authority pursuant to the Property Clause, also in Article IV,
Section 3. An Act of Congress established the territorial government, often giving greater self-
government (e.g., in the form of an elected territorial legislature) as the territory’s population
increased over time. Some states, however, such as California and Texas, have been admitted
without ever being territories.

The Admissions Clause provides that admission of a state requires at least one Act of Congress.
However, Congress has often followed a more complicated process. For many admitted states,
Congress first passed an Enabling Act, which authorized the population of a territory to convene a
constitutional convention to draft a constitution for the new proposed state, and to apply for
admission to Congress. Often in the Enabling Act, Congress specified a range of conditions that the
proposed state had to meet in order for admission to occur. These conditions varied widely across
time and states. For example, some states were precluded from allowing polygamy or slavery, and
some states were forced to practice religious toleration or to afford civil jury trial rights. Once the
proposed state constitution was drafted, it was sent to Congress, which then decided whether to
pass an additional act or resolution admitting the state. One variation in the Enabling Act process
involved Congress delegating the final approval process to the President.
*The primary issue that the courts have wrestled with pursuant to the Admissions Clause is the
extent to which it limits the power of Congress to impose the aforementioned conditions on, or
otherwise to limit the sovereignty of, admitted states. Even though the Constitutional Convention
rejected a provision requiring Congress to admit all new states on an equal footing with the original
states—thus seemingly leaving the issue to the discretion of Congress—the Supreme Court has
nonetheless read such a requirement into the Admissions Clause. And Congress, despite its
frequent imposition of conditions, has in fact included language in virtually every state’s admission
act providing that the state is “admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in
all respects whatsoever.”
The Equal Footing Doctrine was first constitutionalized in Pollard’s Lessee v. Hagan (1845), where
the Supreme Court held that as a matter of basic sovereignty all states have ownership of the beds
of their navigable waterways (submerged lands under major rivers and lakes), and that, because
newly admitted states must be on an equal footing with the existing states, newly admitted states
obtained these same ownership rights when they joined the Union. Most famously, the Supreme
Court applied the Equal Footing Doctrine in Coyle v. Smith (1911) to strike down a condition in the
Oklahoma Enabling Act that restricted the ability of the newly admitted state to move the location of
its state capital. The Court held that, since Congress would not have the power to restrict an
existing state’s decisions about where to locate its state capital, under the Equal Footing Doctrine,
Congress could not control where a newly admitted state could locate its state capital either.
The Equal Footing Doctrine applies only to matters of state sovereign authority, not to economic,
geographic, or ecological conditions that nonetheless may give some states more resources than
other states. For instance, the fact that the federal government owns more than 80 percent of the
land in Nevada does not mean that Nevada was not admitted on an equal footing with other states,
such as New York, where the federal government owns less than one percent of the land. United
States v. Gardner. Nor does the Equal Footing Doctrine require the federal government to surrender
ownership of lands it owns within a newly admitted state, and it does not affect the broad power that
the federal government has to regulate those lands under the Property Clause.
4) The Guarantee Clause: The Guarantee Clause requires the United States to guarantee to the
states a republican form of government, and provide protection from foreign invasion and domestic
violence. Although rarely formally invoked by Congress, the President, or the courts, there is some
consensus on what it means.
At its core, the Guarantee Clause provides for majority rule. A republican government is one in
which the people govern through elections. This is the constant refrain of the Federalist Papers.
Alexander Hamilton, for example, put it this way in The Federalist No. 57: “The elective mode of
obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government.” Thus, the Guarantee Clause
imposes limitations on the type of government a state may have. The Clause requires the United
States to prevent any state from imposing rule by monarchy, dictatorship, aristocracy, or permanent
military rule, even through majority vote. Instead, governing by electoral processes is
constitutionally required.
However, the Guarantee Clause does not speak to the details of the republican government that the
United States is to guarantee. For example, it is difficult to imagine that those who enacted the
Constitution believed the Guarantee Clause would be concerned with state denial of the right to
vote on the basis of race, sex, age, wealth, or property ownership. Article I, Section 2 of the
Constitution left voting qualifications in the hands of the states, although state authority in this area
has been altered by subsequent amendments.
*The Guarantee Clause also does not require any particular form of republican governmental
structure. Thus, in cases such as Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Oregon (1912), the
Supreme Court has refused to invalidate various forms of direct democracy permitted by state law,
such as popular initiative and referendum, on the ground that they violate the Guarantee Clause.
While these decisions were often on jurisdictional grounds, they are consistent with James
Madison’s observation in The Federalist No. 43 that “the States may choose to substitute other
republican forms.”
It is also clear that federal actions regarding states, authorized by other parts of the Constitution, do
not ordinarily violate the Guarantee Clause, even if those federal actions prevent a particular state
decision from going into effect. Under the Supremacy Clause, federal law will sometimes supersede
otherwise valid state laws.
The question whether a Guarantee Clause challenge may be heard in federal court—that is,
whether it is judicially enforceable—is a difficult one. In Luther v. Borden (1849), the Supreme Court
held questions involving the Guarantee Clause nonjusticiable, meaning that any remedy for a
violation would lie with Congress or the President, not the federal judiciary. Nearly one hundred
years later, the Court sweepingly declared that the guarantee of a republican form of government
cannot be challenged in court. Colegrove v. Green (1946).
More recently, however, the Supreme Court has left the door open to a Guarantee Clause
challenge, intimating that the justiciability of such a claim must be decided on a case-by-case basis.
Nevertheless, because protection against invasion or domestic violence is normally available only
from Congress and the President, the structure of this section suggests that the political branches
have at least the primary duty to carry out its obligations.

RESUMEN ART IV
Article IV, Section 1
The Text
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial
Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in
which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

The Meaning
Article IV, Section 1 ensures that states respect and honor the state laws and court orders of other
states, even when their own laws are different. For example, if citizens of New Jersey marry,
divorce, or adopt children in New Jersey, Florida must recognize these actions as valid even if the
marriage or divorce would not have been possible under Florida law. Similarly, if a court in one state
orders a person to pay money or to stop a certain behavior, the courts in other states must
recognize and enforce that state’s order.

Article IV, Section 1 also gives Congress the power to determine how states recognize records and
laws from other states and how they enforce each others’ court orders. For example, Congress may
pass a federal law that specifies how states must handle child custody disputes when state laws are
different or that sets out the process by which a person winning a lawsuit in one state can enforce
the order in another state.

Article IV, Section 2

The Text
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several
States. A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from
Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from
which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

[No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another,
shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or
Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be
due.]10

10 Modified by Amendment XIII.

The Meaning
Article IV, Section 2 guarantees that states cannot discriminate against citizens of other states.
States must give people from other states the same fundamental rights it gives its own citizens. For
example, Arizona cannot prohibit New Mexico residents from traveling, owning property, or working
in Arizona, nor can the state impose substantially different taxes on residents and nonresidents. But
certain distinctions between residents and nonresidents— such as giving state residents a right to
buy a hunting license at a lower cost— are permitted.

Article IV, Section 2 also establishes rules for when an alleged criminal flees to another state. It
provides that the second state is obligated to return the fugitive to the state where the crime was
committed. The process used to return fugitives (extradition) was first created by Congress and
originally enforced by the governors of each state. Today courts enforce the return of accused
prisoners. Fugitives do not need to have been charged with the crime in the first state in order to be
captured in the second and sent back. Once returned, the state can charge the accused with any
crime for which there is evidence.

In contrast, when a foreign country returns a fugitive to a state for trial, the state is only allowed to
try the fugitive on the charges named in the extradition papers (the formal, written request for the
fugitive’s return).

The fugitives from labor provision gave slave owners a nearly absolute right to recapture runaway
slaves who fled to another state, even if slavery was outlawed in that state. This also meant that
state laws in free states intended to protect runaway slaves were unconstitutional because they
interfered with the slave owner’s right to the slave’s return. The adoption of Amendment XIII, which
abolishes slavery and prohibits involuntary servitude, nullified this provision.

Article IV, Section 3

The Text
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or
erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or
more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as
well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations
respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this
Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any
particular State.

The Meaning
Congress can admit new states into the Union, but a single state cannot create a new state within
its boundaries. For example, the state of New York cannot make New York City a separate state. In
addition, two states, or parts of states (i.e. Oregon and Idaho or Wilmington, Delaware, and
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) cannot become states without the consent of the various state
legislatures and Congress. Although an original version of the Constitution included a requirement
that each new state join the Union on equal footing with the other states, the language was removed
before the document was approved. Nevertheless, Congress has always granted new states rights
equal to those of existing states.
Not all of the lands that are owned or controlled by the United States are states. Some lands are
territories, and Congress has the power to sell off or regulate the territories. This includes allowing
U.S. territories to become independent nations, as was done with the Philippines, or regulating the
affairs of current U.S. territories like the District of Columbia, Guam, or Puerto Rico. In addition, this
provision gives Congress the power to set rules for lands owned by the United States, such as the
national parks and national forests. The last sentence of this clause makes sure that nothing in the
Constitution would harm the rights of either the federal government or the states in disputes over
property.

Article IV, Section 4

The Text
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,
and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the
Executive (when the Legislature can-not be convened) against domestic Violence.

The Meaning
This provision, known as the guarantee clause, is attributed to James Madison. It has not been
widely interpreted, but scholars think it ensures that each state be run as a representative
democracy, as opposed to a monarchy (run by a king or queen) or a dictatorship (where one
individual or group of individuals controls the government). Courts however have been reluctant to
specify what exactly a republican form of government means, leaving that decision exclusively to
Congress.

The section also gives Congress the power (and obligation) to protect the states from an invasion
by a foreign country, or from significant violent uprisings within each state. It authorizes the
legislature of each state (or the executive, if the legislature cannot be assembled in time) to request
federal help with riots or other violence.

10th Amendment: The Text: The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people.
The Meaning: The Tenth Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to further define the balance
of power between the federal government and the states. The amendment says that the federal
government has only those powers specifically granted by the Constitution. These powers include
the power to declare war, to collect taxes, to regulate interstate business activities and others that
are listed in the articles.
Any power not listed, says the Tenth Amendment, is left to the states or the people. Although the
Tenth Amendment does not specify what these “powers” may be, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled
that laws affecting family relations (such as marriage, divorce, and adoption), commerce that occurs
within a state’s own borders, and local law enforcement activities, are among those specifically
reserved to the states or the people.
Article 6 of the US Constitution.
Quote #1
Section 1. All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this
Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the
Confederation.

The new US government established by the Constitution promised to take on all the debts racked
up by the older, weaker national government of the Articles of Confederation. This signaled that the
passage of the Constitution wasn't going to be used an excuse for the national government to shirk
its debts.
Quote #2
Section 2. This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance
thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States,
shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any
Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Constitution is the "supreme law of the land"; no other law passed by any of the states can
trump the Constitution. Interestingly, treaties ratified by the Senate also gain the status of "supreme
law of the land." So if the terms of a treaty ever contradict state laws, the terms of the treaty take
precedence.
Quote #3
Section 3. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several
State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the
several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious
Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

All government officials, elected and appointed, must swear an oath to support the Constitution of
the United States. However, that oath need not be religious in nature, and the government cannot
require its officials to pass any test of religious affiliation to take office. The ban on religious tests
was included to ensure that the US government would remain secular in nature.

Bill of Rights. UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

Bill of Rights, in the United States, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which were
adopted as a single unit on December 15, 1791, and which constitute a collection of mutually
reinforcing guarantees of individual rights and of limitations on federal and state governments.

Constitution of the United States of America: Civil liberties and the Bill of Rights
The federal government is obliged by many constitutional provisions to respect the individual
citizen’s basic rights. Some civil liberties…
The Bill of Rights derives from the Magna Carta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689), the
colonial struggle against king and Parliament, and a gradually broadening concept of equality
among the American people. Virginia’s 1776 Declaration of Rights, drafted chiefly by George
Mason, was a notable forerunner. Besides being axioms of government, the guarantees in the Bill of
Rights have binding legal force. Acts of Congress in conflict with them may be voided by the U.S.
Supreme Court when the question of the constitutionality of such acts arises in litigation (see judicial
review).
The Constitution in its main body forbids suspension of the writ of habeas corpus except in cases of
rebellion or invasion (Article I, section 9); prohibits state or federal bills of attainder and ex post facto
laws (I, 9, 10); requires that all crimes against the United States be tried by jury in the state where
committed (III, 2); limits the definition, trial, and punishment of treason (III, 3); prohibits titles of
nobility (I, 9) and religious tests for officeholding (VI); guarantees a republican form of government
in every state (IV, 4); and assures each citizen the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the
several states (IV, 2).
Popular dissatisfaction with the limited guarantees of the main body of the Constitution expressed in
the state conventions called to ratify it led to demands and promises that the first Congress of the
United States satisfied by submitting to the states 12 amendments. Ten were ratified. (The second
of the 12 amendments, which required any change to the rate of compensation for congressional
members to take effect only after the subsequent election in the House of Representatives, was
ratified as the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992.) Individual states being subject to their own bills
of rights, these amendments were limited to restraining the federal government. The Senate refused
to submit James Madison’s amendment (approved by the House of Representatives) protecting
religious liberty, freedom of the press, and trial by jury against violation by the states.
Under the First Amendment, Congress can make no law respecting an establishment of religion or
prohibiting its free exercise, or abridging freedom of speech or press or the right to assemble and
petition for redress of grievances. Hostility to standing armies found expression in the Second
Amendment’s guarantee of the people’s right to bear arms and in the Third Amendment’s
prohibition of the involuntary quartering of soldiers in private houses./ The Fourth Amendment
secures the people against unreasonable searches and seizures and forbids the issuance of
warrants except upon probable cause and directed to specific persons and places. The Fifth
Amendment requires grand jury indictment in prosecutions for major crimes and prohibits double
jeopardy for a single offense. It provides that no person shall be compelled to testify against himself
and forbids the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process of law and the taking of private
property for public use (eminent domain) without just compensation. By the Sixth Amendment, an
accused person is to have a speedy public trial by jury, to be informed of the nature of the
accusation, to be confronted with prosecution witnesses, and to have the assistance of counsel.
The Seventh Amendment formally established the right to trial by jury in civil cases. Excessive bail
or fines and cruel and unusual punishment are forbidden by the Eighth Amendment. The Ninth
Amendment protects unenumerated residual rights of the people, and, by the Tenth, powers not
delegated to the United States are reserved to the states or the people.
After the American Civil War (1861–65), slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, and
the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States
and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens thereof. It forbids the states to abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States or to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property
without due process of law. Beginning in the early 20th century, the Supreme Court used the due
process clause to gradually incorporate, or apply against the states, most of the guarantees
contained in the Bill of Rights, which formerly had been understood to apply only against the federal
government. Thus, the due process clause finally made effective the major portion of Madison’s
unaccepted 1789 proposal.