Republican Government in the United States of America
Published in modified form in M.N.S. Sellers, REPUBLICAN LEGAL THEORY, Chapter 14, Macmillan, 2003
Posted: 18 Jun 2008 Last revised: 10 Nov 2008
Date Written: June 18, 2008
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 "[r]epublican government is no other than government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as collectively.
Keywords: republicanism, legal history, legal theory
JEL Classification: K1, K4
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation