constitutionproject

Tomas Laddaga – Guarantee Clause

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Section 4 Article 4 of the Constitution, the Guarantee Clause, is an important statement guaranteeing the states a republican form of government safe from any foreign invasion and domestic violence. The Guarantee Clause is a very vital section of the constitution, as it sets limitations on the specific type of government a state is able to possess. Thus, in place requiring the United States to prevent any singular state from being put into imposing rule by monarchs which had been a very frequent problem previously. 

Although the Guarantee Clause does require the states to have a republican form of government, it doesn’t affect the structure of such a promised government. For example the restrictions on voting rights based on race and sex that were already set in place are not altered by the clause. As well as that, different forms of democracy imposed by states will not be deprived by the Supreme Court due to the fact that the Guarantee Clause simply does not affect the design of the republic government. Other parts of the constitution involving states actions will also not normally violate the Guarantee Clause, until hundreds of years later when the court finally declared that the guarantee of a republic government to the states won’t ever be challenged. 

Scholar Gabriel J. Chin brought up an interpretation mentioning that the United States wasn’t able to complete its job under the Guarantee Clause in the context of African American suffrage. Gabriel mentions that after the Reconstruction, African Americans still went through disenfranchisement suppression politically and legally despite the guarantee clauses direct provision to protect them from domestic violence. This can be seen in the Mississippi Supreme Court Case directly stating that the white race, although they were the minority they ‘restored power’ through uprising. Thus, further showing the United states inability to keep the republican government. 

Scholar Erin M. Hawly expresses the relationship between states and the federal government; mentioning the limitations between the two. In short, arguing that the Guarantee Clause is in place to limit the federal government’s ability to interfere with individual state function. The application of the legislature is guaranteed because people make decisions through voting which restricts the role of the federal government. Erin mentions the Supreme Court case: ‘Oregon v. Mitchell’ (1970),  they stated that while Congress could set the voting age for federal elections, it did not have that power when it came to state and local elections. Further implying that the Guarantee Clause should maintain the government’s ability to alter a state’s function to a limit. Thus, keeping the republican theme of state operation. 

Between the two matters of debate, Gabriels argument seems slightly more compelling for the reason that the problem of African American suffrage has been a dark theme in the United States even up until today. The Guarantee Clause made it clear that domestic violence would be put to a limit in the states, yet the federal government didn’t do much to hold up that part. The idea behind the Guarantee Clause is a very strong one with very impactful laws, the only thing limiting its full potential being the federal government’s inability to stick through it. The only thing that should be altered about the Guarantee Clause is the federal government’s full ability to interfere with the states. 

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lDGP3mPL9NJm4srbwRkbqf2O2OU7ToX9cOjsvvqHHJw/edit

Dassori – 9th Amendment

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While the Constitution was being ratified, several Antifederalist state representatives only approved the document with the expectation that a bill of rights would be added afterwards to protect the people from an overly powerful government. However, because Federalist James Madison worried that a bill of rights would send the message that any other rights not listed were not protected by the government, he proposed the addition of a statement to protect unenumerated rights. His proposal resulted in the addition of the Ninth Amendment, which states that just because some rights are named in the Constitution does not mean those not mentioned are not protected by the government. 

The Ninth Amendment, which is notoriously vague, has been interpreted differently by many different Supreme Court judges and Constitutional scholars. Three prevalent interpretations of these unnamed rights are rights that are defined on a state-by-state basis, the natural rights of life, liberty, and property each individual has, or any imaginable right that the Constitution does not explicitly deny. Another interpretation ignores the Ninth Amendment because it does not concretely prove the existence of other rights or explain them in enough detail to be valid in a court case. 

Estelle Griswold used this amendment in Griswold v. Connecticut when she argued that married couples have a right to privacy and therefore a right to use contraception. Although privacy is never explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, Griswold used the Ninth Amendment and several other amendments to win her case, arguing that privacy is an assumed right of the American people and cannot be restricted by the law. Griswold v. Connecticut provides an example of how several judges interpreted this amendment differently, however, as only Justice Goldberg believed the right to privacy was represented in the Ninth Amendment while other judges found it in the Fourteenth Amendment or did not find privacy in the Constitution at all. 

I am most strongly persuaded that the “unenumerated rights” protected by the Ninth Amendment refer to natural or unalienable rights. These rights are featured in the writings of many of the Constitution’s framers and their Enlightenment contemporaries and are seen clearly in the Declaration of Independence. Because it was not specifically stated that the rights would be defined by the states or that they were completely limitless, I think the framers were referring to their own ideas of basic human rights, a concept that heavily influenced the rest of the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights. I would change this amendment to specify what kind of rights it was meant to protect because I think its vagueness restricts its power. By not clearly defining what it protects, the amendment allows many potential rights, such as the right to privacy, to be ignored by someone whose interpretation of the amendment did not include that right. If the Ninth Amendment had specifically stated that it, for example, protected natural rights, modern judges would be more likely to interpret it accurately instead of ignoring or abusing it.