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Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution is generally known as the Guarantee Clause because it guarantees a republican form of government, generally known to be a government run by the people through elections. The clause also ensures the federal government’s protection of states against foreign invasion or internal insurrection, but this is not its primary function as this power is already conferred elsewhere in the Constitution.
Crucially, the guarantee of a republican form of government is commonly understood to require majority rule for all individual states. This correlation between a republican government and majority rule is expressed in Federalist No. 57, which says that “[t]he elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government”, indicating that majority rule is a necessary component of any form of republican government. Hence, this clause limits the type of government a state may have by preventing any state from imposing any type of monarchy, dictatorship, aristocracy, or permanent military rule, even through a majority vote. Instead, the Guarantee Clause requires a government created by majority election.
Although the clause requires each state to have a republican form of government, it importantly does not speak to the details of that government, explicitly leaving state legislatures to decide voting qualifications (Article I, Sections 2 & 4). The Guarantee Clause was created because delegates of the Constitutional Convention feared a monarchy arising in a particular state and establishing tyranny over the entire US.
However, the Framers’ decision to leave the voting qualifications up to the states has resulted in considerable debate over whether or not the federal government has consistently guaranteed majority rule in the states. Some legal scholars believe that the US’s acceptance of the disenfranchisement of African Americans in former Confederate states after Reconstruction was a failure to uphold the Guarantee Clause. After the Civil War, African Americans were a majority of the population in Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and 40 percent or more in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Virginia. However, African Americans were systematically disenfranchised, particularly in places where they were majorities.
The tension of balancing minority rule while maintaining a republican form of government was on display in the 1896 Mississippi Supreme Court case, Ratliff v. Beale. In this case, the court explained that after the civil war, Mississippi’s government was in a period in which the government was controlled primarily by recently enfranchised Blacks, and then, through a white uprising, moved into being controlled and administered by the white minority overseeing a Black majority. In this case, the court attempts to justify this contradictory governmental structure by denouncing the African Americans as “unfitted by educational experience for the responsibility thrust upon [them].”
Though states are allowed to change voting qualifications by the Constitution, some legal historians believe that the Guarantee Clause does not allow states to instate minority rule, making the disenfranchisement of African Americans unconstitutional.
I would advocate for an amendment to the Guarantee Clause to make it more robust and direct. As this clause has not been particularly debated within the Supreme Court, my amendment would aim to improve the effectiveness of the Guarantee Clause rather than absolve states concerns. I would amend the clause to clarify the criteria for what constitutes a “republican form of government” and provide more guidance on the powers and limitations of the federal government in guaranteeing and maintaining republican government in states. This amendment would prevent cases like Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Oregon (1912) from succeeding in permitting various forms of direct democracy permitted by state law.
The Supreme Court refused to invalidate these governments on the grounds that they did not violate the Guarantee Clause. A more precise amendment would make these distinctions more clear. As well as changing the rulings on these types of cases, a clarified version of the Guarantee Clause would have perhaps limited or even prevented the systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans in former Confederate states after the Civil War. The disenfranchisement of African Americans after the Civil War had long-lasting consequences, perpetuating racial inequality, political exclusion, economic disadvantages, and systemic racism in the United States.