Here’s something you probably didn’t know: states like Michigan, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky have all ceased in recent weeks to be organized in political terms as republican forms of government. The culprits in each case are the states’ governors—Gretchen Whitmer,…
The clause—Article IV, Sec. 4 of the document—reads in its entirety:
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 cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
Scholars agree on one thing about this clause: It was meant to exclude monarchical forms of government, in which elections are dispensed with or high office could be inherited within a family. And it worked: No state, not even Massachusetts with the Kennedys, has adopted formally dynastic methods of filling high office.
How much more than that does the clause require? Agreement soon breaks down, as many schools of thought will argue that their preferred ways of organizing political life are indispensable to a properly functioning republic and should be seen as implied requirements under the clause. In the dispute that the Court refused to resolve in the 1849 case, Rhode Island had retained a high property qualification that essentially kept the government in the hands of larger landowners while excluding the majority of male citizens. Later cases sought to challenge as departures from republicanism innovations that made government too democratic—for example, the use of initiative and referendum was assailed on this basis as bypassing the aspect of republicanism under which power is ordinarily exercised through representative institutions rather than directly by the people. Those challenges failed too.
In truth, the more modest readings of the clause are the most persuasive. In our day, as in the Founders’, republics can be organized in all sorts of ways, including dysfunctional and regrettable ways, while still counting as republics. Switzerland is an archetypal republic whose structure influenced the Founders; its cantons are not all organized the same way, just as no two American states organize their legislature in the same way. The Republic of Italy may be a dysfunctional polity in many ways, but it would be idle to deny it the status of republic. Gerrymandering is an ill typical of republics, but it does not keep them from being so—in fact you might say it even perversely serves to confirm their status as republics, the way certain ailments specific to canines confirm that your suffering pet is indeed a dog. And so forth.
