A Long-Ago Rebellion...with Modern-Day Consequences
Voting Rights Academy: How an 1849 Case Impacts American Democracy Today
What if the people of an American state, so fed up with voter suppression in that state, declared open rebellion against its leaders?
What if each side in that dispute then conducted their own statewide elections, under different Constitutions each claimed was the legitimate one, and then each declared themselves the rightful government of that state?
Now imagine a lawsuit where the two sides each argued to the Supreme Court that they were the rightful leaders of that state? How would the Court handle such a case?
How would they even go about deciding who represented the rightful government of that state?
It sounds like a crazy hypothetical, I know.
But it actually happened. In the 1840s. In Rhode Island:
And the case did go to the Supreme Court.
And the Court’s decision on how to handle the dispute—namely, ruling that it wasn’t for the Court to decide such a question at all—still plays a major role in American democracy today.
More specifically, this case, Luther v. Borden, is the foundational case that placed the Constitution’s “Guarantee Clause”—that “the United States shall guarantee to all states a Republican Form of government”—beyond the reach of federal courts. And it’s the case that cemented into place the broader principle that disputes involving a political question are for the political branches—and not courts—to sort out.
Which means that that rebellion in Rhode Island nearly 200 years ago is, among other things, why the Court today refuses to resolve cases involving egregious partisan gerrymandering, and why nobody could take one of our deeply undemocratic states to court on the claim that that state no longer satisfies the Constitution’s guarantee of being a republican form of government. It’s also a precedent for why the Court seems so gun shy about wading into major political disputes like the disqualification case.
So what happened in Rhode Island almost two centuries ago emerges as an important part of the history of our democracy, and American election law today.
This Voting Rights Academy class will dive into the details of this rebellion, and the bedrock American law that emerged from it. And it will ask the question: has the Court over-reacted from an odd case and a truly unique set of facts to handcuff its ability to protect democracy in other contexts going forward?
Rebellion in Rhode Island
It was a battle over voter suppression, 1840s-style….
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