ARTICLE IV CONTINUED

Aug 17, 2023

Gold Panners:

A follow-up to the post on Article IV, Sections 3 and 4, SEE WIKI BELOW.

As you will read, I believe the term Hostage Clause is appropriate for Section 3, Clause/Paragraph 1 because, the Framers of the Constitution were ready to finalize the Constitution but for the large States with great western land holdings such as New York, Virginia, North Carolina and Massachusetts would not sign until they knew they could control their western borders. (California, the 3^rd largest state). This article shows the power they had and used. It also shows WHY many people in the 50 states are fighting for their Rights of self-determination and governance. A good readjustment of America’s borders and down-sizing of some states will revitalize her for all Americans. We refuse to be held Hostage any longer!

I took the liberty of bolding and italicizing the words in paragraph 6 about Congress owning the soil under a state; in paragraph 8 about a State’s obligation to the guarantee of a Republican Form of Government; paragraph 3 under Property Clause about Other Property owned by Congress which was purchased at the same time as California.

Republican Form of Government: Most of my readings call RFG representative government with small districts. (Otherwise the government becomes a Democracy, which is mentioned NO WHERE IN THE CONSTITUTION). I take Article 1, Section 2 to mean even the States should align with their example of, “no greater than 30,000 to each representative. California has the worst representation of all 50 states and NOT ONE REPRESENTATIVE, CONGRESSIONAL OR STATE, LIVES IN EL DORADO, A POPULATION OF ALMOST 200,000.

Paragraph 2: (My bold again) DO THE MINORITY DESERVE ANY LESS CAPTIVITY FROM THE MAJORITY??? Tyranny by either is soon tyranny of all.

Section 4, Obligations of the United States:

4^th paragraph, once again, the answer lies with Congress, not the Judicial Branch. All roads lead us directly to Congress! Pack your bags for a road trip next year.

FYI: El Dorado is larger than Rhode Island.

Sharon Durst

ACCORDING TO WIKIPEDIA:

Wiki

Section 3: New states and federal property[edit]

Clause 1: Admission of new states[edit]

Main article: Admission to the Union

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States 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 First Clause of Section Three, also known as the Admissions Clause,^[6] grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to 50. It also forbids the creation of new states from parts of existing states without the consent of the affected states and Congress. This latter provision was designed to give Eastern states that still had claims to Western lands (e.g., Virginia and North Carolina) to have a veto over whether their western counties (which eventually became Kentucky and Tennessee) could become states.^[7] It would later be applied with regard to the formation of Maine (from Massachusetts) and West Virginia (from Virginia).^[8]

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal to include the phrase, "new States shall be admitted on the same terms with the original States", was defeated. It was feared that the political power of future new western states would eventually overwhelm that of the established eastern states. Once the new Constitution went into effect, however, Congress admitted Vermont and Kentucky on equal terms and thereafter formalized the condition in its acts of admission for subsequent states, declaring that the new state enters "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever." Thus the Congress, utilizing the discretion allowed by the framers, adopted a policy of equal status for all newly admitted states.^[7] With the growth of states' rights advocacy during the antebellum period, the Supreme Court asserted, in Lessee of Pollard v. Hagan (1845),^[9] that the Constitution mandated admission of new states on the basis of equality.^[10]

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. For instance the Supreme Court struck down a provision which limited the jurisdiction of the state of Alabama over navigable waters within the state. The Court held,

Alabama is, therefore, entitled to the sovereignty and jurisdiction over all the territory within her limits ... to maintain any other doctrine, is to deny that Alabama has been admitted into the union on an equal footing with the original states ... to Alabama belong the navigable waters and soils under them.

The doctrine, however, can also be applied to the detriment of states, as occurred with Texas. Before admission to the Union, Texas, as an independent nation, controlled water within three miles of the coast, the normal limit for nations. Under the equal footing doctrine, however, Texas was found not to have control over the three-mile belt after admission into the Union, because the original states did not at the time of joining the union control such waters. Instead, by entering the Union, Texas was found to have surrendered control over the water and the soil under it to Congress. Under the Submerged Lands Act of 1953, Congress returned maritime territory to some states, but not to others; the Act was sustained by the Supreme Court.

The constitution is silent on the question of whether or not a state may unilaterally leave, or secede from, the Union. However, the Supreme Court, in Texas v. White (1869), held that a state cannot unilaterally do so.^[11]

When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States.^[12]

Clause 2: Property Clause[edit]

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.^[13]

This clause, commonly known as the "Property Clause" or "Territorial Clause", grants Congress the constitutional authority for the management and control of all territories or other property owned by the United States. Additionally, the clause also proclaims that nothing contained within the Constitution may be interpreted to harm (prejudice) any claim of the United States, or of any particular State. The exact scope of this clause has long been a matter of debate.

The federal government owns about twenty-eight percent of the land in the United States.^[14] These holdings include national parks, national forests, recreation areas, wildlife refuges, vast tracts of range and public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, reservations held in trust for Native American tribes, military bases, and ordinary federal buildings and installations. Although federal property can be found in every state, the largest concentrations are in the west, where, for example, the federal government owns over eighty percent of the land within Nevada.^[15]

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 a finding of trespass. The case prohibited the entering upon the public lands of the United States and removing wild burros under the New Mexico Estray Law.^[16]

A major issue early in the 20th century was whether the whole Constitution applied to the territories called insular areas by Congress. In a series of opinions by the Supreme Court of the United States, referred to as the Insular Cases, the Court ruled that the territories belonged to, but were not part of the United States. Therefore, under the Territorial clause, Congress had the power to determine which parts of the Constitution applied to the territories. These rulings have helped shape public opinion among Puerto Ricans during the ongoing debate over the commonwealth's political status.

Section 4: Obligations of the United States[edit]

Main article: Guarantee Clause

Clause 1: Republican government[edit]

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, [...]

This clause, sometimes referred to as the Guarantee Clause, has long been at the forefront of the debate about the rights of citizens vis-à-vis the government. The Guarantee Clause mandates that all U.S. states must be grounded in republican principles such as the consent of the governed.^[17] By ensuring that all states must have the same basic republican philosophy, the Guarantee Clause is one of several portions of the Constitution which mandates symmetric federalism between the states.

The Constitution does not explain what exactly constitutes a republican form of government. There are, however, several places within it where the principles behind the concept are articulated. Article Seven, the last and shortest of the Constitution's original articles, stipulated that the Constitution, before it could become established as the "Law of the Land", must obtain the consent of the people by being ratified by popular conventions within the several states. Additionally, as it required the ratification of only nine states in order to become established, rather than the unanimous consent required by the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution was more republican, as it protected the majority from effectively being ruled or held captive by the minority.^[18]

The Federalist Papers also gives some insight as to the intent of the Founders. A republican form of government is distinguished from a direct 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 political 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 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) was invalid. In Luther v. Borden,^[19] the Court held that the determination of whether a state government is a legitimate republican form as guaranteed by the Constitution is a political question to be resolved by the Congress. In effect, the court held the clause to be nonjusticiable.

The Luther v. Borden ruling left the responsibility to establish guidelines for the republican nature of state governments in the hands of the Congress. This power became an important part of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. The Radical Republican majority used this clause as the basis for taking control of the ex-Confederate states and for promoting civil rights for freedmen, plus the limiting of political and voting rights for ex-Confederates, abolishing the ex-Confederate state governments, setting guidelines for the readmission of the rebellious states into the Union.

In 1912, Luther was reaffirmed in Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Co. v. Oregon.^[20] In Pacific States, a utility company challenged an Oregon tax law passed by a referendum, as opposed to the ordinary legislative process.^[21] The utility company claimed that the use of referendums, as a form of direct democracy, violated the republican form of government clause, which permits only a representative democracy.^[21] The court rejected the challenge, finding the challenge to have presented a nonjusticiable political question that only Congress can resolve.^[21]

The doctrine was later limited in Baker v. Carr (1962), which held that the lack of state legislative redistricting to be justiciable.^[21]

While the Supreme Court's holding in Luther v. Borden still holds today, the Court, by looking to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (adopted 19 years after Luther v. Borden was decided), has developed new criteria for determining which questions are political in nature and which are justiciable.

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

[...] and [the United States] shall protect each of them [the States] against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Section Four requires the United States to protect each state from invasion, and, upon the application of the state legislature (or executive, if the legislature cannot be convened), from domestic violence. This provision was invoked by Colorado governor Elias M. Ammons in 1914 during the Colorado Coalfield War, as a result of which President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops to the state.^[22]

El Dorado State’s Substack

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