Abstract
The Fourth Section of the Fourth Article of the Constitution of the United States of America pledges that the national government will “guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government”. By “republic”, eighteenth-century English-speaking writers meant to signify (as Thomas Paine most famously explained it), whatever government best serves “the purport, matter, or object for which government ought to be instituted, and on which it is to be employed”, which is to say, the “res-publica, the public affairs, or the public good; or, literally translated, the public thing”. From this it follows that whatever government “does not act on the principle of a republic, or, in other words, that does not make the res-publica its whole and sole object, is not a good government”, and “[rjepublican government is no other than government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as collectively”.1
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Notes
T. Paine, The Rights of Man: Part H (1792), in B. Kuklick (ed.), Paine: Political Writings. Cambridge, England. Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 168. On republicanism generally, see P. Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1997; M.N.S. Sellers, The Sacred Fire of Liberty: Republicanism, Liberalism and the Law. Basingstoke, England and New York. Macmillan and New York University Press, 1998; ibid., American Republicanism: Roman Ideology in the United States Constitution. Basingstoke, England and New York. Macmillan and New York University. 1994.
Thomas Paine, The Rights ofMan: Part77 (1792), in Bruce Kuklick (ed.), Paine: Political Writings, pp. 167–169.
“Publius” [James Madison], Federalist X (1787), in Isaac Kramnick (ed.), The Federalist Papers, London. Penguin, 1987, pp. 126–127.
John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. London. C. Dilly, 1787, p. I.ii.
John Adams, Thoughts on government (1776), in C.S. Hyneman and D.S. Lutz (eds), American Political Writing during the Founding Era: 1760–1805. Indianapolis. Liberty Fund, 1983, pp. I.401–409.
John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, vol. I.
J. Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States ofAmerica, pp. I. xix-xxii.
John Adams, Thoughts on Government (1776), in C.S. Hyneman and D.S. Lutz (eds), American Political Writing during the Founding Era: 1760–1805, p. 402.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, de officiis, III.vi.26.
Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois. Geneva, 1748, at I.ix.1–3.
John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, p. I.124.
M.N.S. Sellers, American Republicanism: Roman Ideology in the United States Constitution. Basingstoke, England and New York. Macmillan and New York University Press, 1994.
John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, pp. I.362–363.
Cf. John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, pp. I.ix—x.
James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), in J.G.A. Pocock (ed.), The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 22.
See, for example, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 US 1 (1970); Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 US 448 (1980); Local 28, Sheet Metal Workers International Association v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 106 S.Ct. 309 (1986).
Cf. John Locke, Two Treatises of Govemment (1690).
Institutes, I.2.6: “Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem, cum lege regia quae de ejus imperio lata est, populus ei et in aim, omne imperium suum et potestatem concessit”. Cf. Ulpian, Digest 1.4.1.
Yakus v. United States, 321 US 414 (1944). Cf. Henry Hart, Jr. & Albert Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law, William Eskridge, Jr. & Philip Frickey (eds), 1994 [tent. ed. 1958].
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Sellers, M.N.S. (2003). Republican Government in the United States of America. In: Republican Legal Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230513402_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230513402_14
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