Article Four of the United States Constitution

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Article Four of the United States Constitution outlines the duties states have to each other, as well as those the federal government has to the states. Article Four also provides for the admission of new states and the changing of state boundaries. Additionally, it contains the Fugitive Slave Clause, but the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids slavery, made that clause mostly moot.

Section 1: Full faith and credit[edit]




Section 2: Obligations of states[edit]

Clause 1: Privileges and Immunities[edit]






Clause 2: Extradition of fugitives[edit]



In Kentucky v. Dennison, 65 U.S. 66 (1860), the Supreme Court held that the federal courts may not compel state governors to surrender fugitives through the issue of writs of mandamus. The Dennison decision was overruled by Puerto Rico v. Branstad, 483 U.S. 219 (1987); now, the federal courts may require the extradition of fugitives.[1] Alleged fugitives generally may not challenge extradition proceedings.



Clause 3: Fugitive Slave Clause[edit]


Pierce Butler and Charles Pinckney, both from South Carolina, submitted this clause to the Constitutional Convention. James Wilson of Pennsylvania objected, stating it would require that state governments to enforce slavery at taxpayers' expense. Butler withdrew the clause. However, on the next day the clause was quietly reinstated and adopted by the Convention without objection. This clause was added to the clause that provided extradition for fugitives from justice.[3]


In 1864, during the Civil War, an effort to repeal this clause of the Constitution failed.[4] This clause was rendered mostly moot when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.

Section 3: New states and federal property[edit]

Clause 1: New states[edit]


By Section Three, Congress may admit new states to the Union. Admission was planned for Vermont after settlement of border issues with New York. No new state, however, may be formed by joining multiple states, without the consent of all state legislatures concerned.

The Constitution does not require that states be admitted on an "equal footing" with the original states. In fact, the Constitutional Convention rejected a proposal requiring the equality of new states. Congress nevertheless included an equality clause in the statehood acts of admission of states. Congressional restrictions on the equality of states, even when those limitations have been found in the acts of admission, have been held void by the Supreme Court.




During the Civil War, the people of western Virginia rejected the state convention's decision to secede from the Union. This region formed a new government for the state of Virginia, which President Abraham Lincoln immediately recognized. In 1863 this state legislature permitted its western counties to split off and become the state of West Virginia. Congress recognized West Virginia, as did the Supreme Court in Virginia v. West Virginia, 78 U.S. 39 (1871).[5]

The question of leaving the Union is not addressed by the Constitution. In Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869), the Supreme Court suggested that the Constitution ordained the "perpetuity and indissolubility of the Union". The court did allow some possibility of the divisibility "through revolution, or through consent of the States."[6][7]

Clause 2: Federal Property and Territory Clause[edit]


The Federal Property and Territory Clause or Property Clause gives the United States Congress exclusive authority to set rules and regulations for the management of public lands. For example, pursuant to a parallel clause in Article One, Section Eight, the Supreme Court has held that states may not tax such federal property. In another case, Kleppe v. New Mexico, the Court ruled that the Federal Wild Horse and Burro Act was a constitutional exercise of congressional power under the Property Clause at least insofar as it was applied to prohibit the New Mexico Livestock Board from entering upon the public lands of the United States and removing wild burros under the New Mexico Estray Law.[9]


Section 4: Obligations of the United States[edit]

Clause 1: Republican government[edit]


This clause, sometimes referred to as the Guarantee Clause, has historically been a part of the debate about the rights of citizens vis-a-vis state governments. The Guarantee Clause mandates that all U.S. states must be grounded in republican principles, such as consent of the governed. [10]

The Constitution does not explain what exactly constitutes a republican government. However, the Federalist Papers give us an insight as to the intent of the Founders. A republican form of government is distinguished from a democracy which the Founding Fathers had no intentions of entering; as James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, "Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

A crisis in 1840s Rhode Island, the Dorr Rebellion, forced the Supreme Court to rule on the meaning of this clause. At the time, the Rhode Island constitution was the old royal charter established in the 17th century. By the 1840s, only 40% of the state's free white males in the state were enfranchised. An attempt to hold a popular convention to write a new constitution was declared insurrection by the charter government, and the convention leaders were arrested. One of them brought suit in federal court, arguing that Rhode Island's government was not "republican" in character, and that his arrest (along with all of the government's other acts) were invalid. In Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1 (1849), the Court rejected the notion that the republican character of states lay within the purview of judicial review, holding that “it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State ... as well as its republican character.” In effect, the court held the clause to be non-justiciable.

The Luther v. Borden ruling left to Congress to establish guidelines for the republican nature of state governments. This power became an important part of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. The Radical Republicans used this clause as the basis in 1867 for abolishing the ex-Confederate regimes, putting the states under Army rule, and deciding when they were to be readmitted to Congress. The issue was whether Congress or the President had primary responsibility.[11]

With the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the power of the federal government to safeguard these rights was added to the Constitution, and this interpretation of Section Four became moot. When the Supreme Court revisited some of the territory covered by Luther v. Borden in cases like Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause was the basis of its changed decisions.

The guarantee of a republican government has been asserted by many advocates to prohibit the use of direct democracy procedures in the states. The use of the initiative, referendum, and recall are all tools of direct democracy that allow the electorate to exercise legislative power independently of their representatives. When the Supreme Court heard a challenge to the use of statewide initiatives in Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon, 223 U.S. 118 (1912), it held that challenges to a state's republican character are non-justiciable political questions, and that only Congress can determine whether a state's government conforms with the guarantee clause. Each time Congress accepts members to the House and Senate, Congress implicitly acknowledges the legitimacy and republican nature of the state from which the representatives were elected.[12]

Clause 2: Protection from invasion and domestic violence[edit]



Notes and references[edit]

  1. ^ 483 U.S. 219 (1987) (“Kentucky v. Dennison is the product of another time. The conception of the relation between the States and the Federal Government there announced is fundamentally incompatible with more than a century of constitutional development.”)
  8. ^
  9. ^ 426 U.S. 529 (1976); 96 S.Ct. 2285; 49 L.Ed.2d 34
  11. ^ Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1960) p 114
  12. ^ Luther v. Borden 48 U.S. 1 (1849) ("And when the senators and representatives of a State are admitted into the councils of the Union, the authority of the government under which they are appointed, as well as its republican character, is recognized by the proper constitutional authority."); Sevilla v. Elizalde, 112 F. 2d 29, 33.n3 (D.C.Cir. 1940), citing Pacific States Telephone and Luther.

Further reading[edit]


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