Module 14: Article IV: The States and the Union

The Text

Article IV is four sections long. It sets the terms on which the States deal with one another, how new States join, who owns the territory the Union holds, and what the nation owes every State in return. The National Archives transcription of the engrossed Constitution gives it this way:

"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."

U.S. Const. art. IV, § 1 (National Archives transcription)

"The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States."

"A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime."

"No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."

U.S. Const. art. IV, § 2, cls. 1 to 3 (National Archives transcription)

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."

"The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State."

U.S. Const. art. IV, § 3, cls. 1 and 2 (National Archives transcription)

"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."

U.S. Const. art. IV, § 4 (National Archives transcription)

The four sections pack in several distinct rules, and each has its own name and its own case law: the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause, the Extradition Clause, the fugitive-labor clause, the Admissions Clause, the Territory and Property Clause, and the Guarantee Clause. The National Archives marks part of one as superseded. Its note at the Thirteenth Amendment says "A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment." The fugitive-labor clause is that portion. It stays in the engrossed text, and a later part of this module tells how it got there.¹

The article is about relationships. Articles I through III build the federal government, and the Tenth Amendment later says where State power sits. Article IV answers a different set of questions. What does a Nevada court owe a California judgment? Can Idaho charge a visiting hunter more than it charges a resident? When does a governor have to hand a man over to another governor? Who decides whether a State is still a republic? Article IV is where a federal system keeps its joints.²

How the Article Was Built

Three clauses inherited from the Confederation

The Articles of Confederation had already tried to solve three of these problems in a single article. Its Article IV gave "the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted" the "privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States." It ordered that a person "guilty of, or charged with, treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor in any State, shall flee from justice, and be found in any of the United States," be delivered up "upon demand of the Governor or executive power of the State from which he fled." And it said "Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State."³

The Federalist treated that inheritance with little respect. Madison wrote in Number 42 that the Confederation's wording on privileges was a "confusion of language here, which is remarkable," because the one article used "free inhabitants," "free citizens," and "the people" for what looked like the same group. On full faith and credit he said the Confederation's clause was "extremely indeterminate, and can be of little importance under any interpretation which it will bear."⁴ The Convention kept the ideas and rewrote the machinery.

The Northwest Ordinance, written while the Convention sat

Two other texts shaped the article from outside the Convention hall. On July 13, 1787, with the Convention already seven weeks into its work, the Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. It laid out a path to statehood for the territory north of the Ohio River. When any of the new States reached "sixty thousand free inhabitants," it was to be admitted "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever." Article 6 of the Ordinance said there would be "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory," with a proviso that a person "from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States" who escaped into it "may be lawfully reclaimed." That one paragraph held an admission rule, a republican-government condition ("the constitution and government so to be formed, shall be republican") and a fugitive-labor rule. All three have counterparts in Article IV.⁵

The August 6 draft

The Committee of Detail's report of August 6 packed the subject into five short articles. Article XIV gave citizens of each State "all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." Article XV was extradition, covering "treason, felony or high misdemeanor." Article XVI said "Full faith shall be given in each State to the acts of the Legislatures, and to the records and judicial proceedings of the Courts and magistrates of every other State." Article XVII let the national Legislature admit new States, required a two-thirds vote in each House, and said "the new States shall be admitted on the same terms with the original States." Article XVIII said the United States "shall guaranty to each State a Republican form of government; and shall protect each State against foreign invasions, and, on the application of its Legislature, against domestic violence."⁶ Nothing in the draft mentioned fugitive slaves, the Territory Clause, or State consent to boundary changes. Those came out of the floor debate in the last week of August.

August 28: privileges and extradition

On August 28, the Convention took up Article XIV first. General Pinckney "was not satisfied with it" and "seemed to wish some provision should be included in favor of property in slaves." The article passed anyway, with nine States in favor, South Carolina against and Georgia divided. Article XV came next. The delegates struck "high misdemeanor" and wrote in "other crime," Madison recorded, "in order to comprehend all proper cases: it being doubtful whether 'high misdemeanor' had not a technical meaning too limited."⁷

Then Butler and Pinckney of South Carolina moved "to require fugitive slaves and servants to be delivered up like criminals." James Wilson objected: "This would oblige the Executive of the State to do it at the public expence." Roger Sherman "saw no more propriety in the public seizing and surrendering a slave or servant, than a horse." Butler withdrew the motion "in order that some particular provision might be made apart from this article." Article XV, as amended, passed without a dissent.⁷

August 29: three clauses in one day

The next day produced three results. The full-faith article drew a short argument and a referral. Williamson wanted the Confederation's words restored because he "did not understand precisely the meaning of the article." Wilson and Johnson read it to mean that "Judgments in one State should be the ground of actions in other States." Madison wanted Congress "authorized to provide for the execution of Judgments in other States." Randolph answered that "there was no instance of one nation executing judgments of the Courts of another nation," and proposed his own text on proof and effect of State acts. The Convention committed the article to a committee of five, 9 to 2, with New Hampshire and Massachusetts opposed. Gouverneur Morris added a proposal of his own, and the committee (Rutledge, Randolph, Gorham, Wilson and Johnson) took all of them.⁸

That same day Butler tried again on fugitive labor with a separate provision, to be inserted after Article XV. It read "If any person bound to service or labor in any of the U. States shall escape into another State, he or she shall not be discharged from such service or labor, in consequence of any regulations subsisting in the State to which they escape, but shall be delivered up to the person justly claiming their service or labor." It passed without objection. The Convention's Journal records the count as 11 to 0.⁸⁹

The third result was the admission article. Morris moved to strike its last two sentences, the promise that new States "shall be admitted on the same terms with the original States" and the power to attach debt conditions. He "did not wish to bind down the Legislature to admit Western States on the terms here stated." Madison opposed him, "insisting that the Western States neither would nor ought to submit to a union which degraded them from an equal rank with other States." Mason agreed: "the best policy is to treat them with that equality which will make them friends not enemies." Sherman wanted "an equality of privileges" fixed in the Constitution. The Convention struck the sentences anyway, 9 to 2, with Maryland and Virginia in the minority. Morris then moved a substitute: "New States may be admitted by the Legislature into this Union: but no new State shall be erected within the limits of any of the present States, without the consent of the Legislature of such State, as well as of the Genl. Legislature." The first half of the substitute, through the words "into this Union," drew no objection. Luther Martin opposed the rest: nothing, he said, "would so alarm the limited States as to make the consent of the large States claiming the Western lands, necessary to the establishment of new States within their limits." The substitute as a whole carried 6 to 5.⁸

August 30: territory, property and the guarantee

August 30 reopened the second half of that substitute. Martin repeated his objection to requiring the small States to guarantee the large States' Western claims, and moved to let Congress "erect New States within as well as without the territory claimed by the several States." Only New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland voted for it. The version that finally passed said no new State could be "formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any of the present States without the consent of the Legislature of such State as well as of the General Legislature." It carried 8 to 3, with New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland opposed. Dickinson then added the junction rule, barring a State "formed by the junction of two or more States or parts thereof, without the consent of the Legislatures of such States, as well as of the Legislature of the U. States." The Convention took it without counting the votes.¹⁰

Daniel Carroll of Maryland proposed a proviso protecting the United States' claim to "vacant lands ceded to them by the Treaty of peace." Wilson thought "it was best to insert nothing" because the Constitution did not touch those claims either way. Madison thought the proviso harmless if it also protected "the claims of particular States." Carroll withdrew it and moved that the Supreme Court decide the competing claims. Morris answered with the language that became the Territory and Property Clause, giving the Legislature power "to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the U. States," with a savings clause for "any claims either of the U. S. or of any particular State." Martin's amendment to send the claims to the Supreme Court lost. Morris's text passed with Maryland alone dissenting.¹⁰

The guarantee article got four separate amendments. "Foreign" was struck from "foreign invasions," unanimously, "as superfluous, being implied in the term 'invasion.'" Dickinson moved to drop the requirement of a State legislature's application, because domestic violence "may proceed from the State Legislature itself, or from disputes between the two branches." Dayton pointed to "the Conduct of Rho: Island" as proof of "the necessity of giving latitude to the power of the U. S." The motion lost, 3 States to 8. A motion to replace "domestic violence" with "insurrections" lost, 5 to 6. Dickinson's next motion, to add "or Executive" after "Legislature," carried 8 to 2 with Maryland divided. Martin's attempt to limit that addition to "the recess of the Legislature" drew only Maryland's vote. The clause as amended passed 9 to 2, with Delaware and Maryland opposed.¹⁰

September 1 to 3: the full-faith text settles

On September 1, Rutledge's committee reported a full-faith article that read "the Legislature shall by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, Records, & proceedings shall be proved, and the effect which Judgments obtained in one State, shall have in another." Two days later Morris moved to strike the words about judgments and write the word "thereof" after "effect," which made Congress's power reach the effect of all "acts, records & proceedings." Mason favored it, "particularly if the 'effect' was to be restrained to judgments & Judicial proceedings." Wilson said that without a power to declare effect, the clause would "amount to nothing more than what now takes place among all Independent Nations." Johnson worried that the new wording "would authorise the Genl. Legislature to declare the effect of Legislative acts of one State, in another State." Randolph called it a strengthening of "the general objection agst. the plan, that its definition of the powers of the Government was so loose as to give it opportunities of usurping all the State powers." Morris's amendment carried 6 to 3, with Maryland, Virginia and Georgia opposed. Madison then moved to change "ought to" to "shall" and the legislature's "shall" to "may," which was agreed without objection, and the full clause was approved without a count.¹¹¹²

September 12 to 15: the final words

The Committee of Style's September 12 report gave the fugitive-labor clause this wording: "No person legally held to service or labour in one state, escaping into another, shall in consequence of regulations subsisting therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due."¹³ Three days later the Convention changed it. Madison recorded: "the term 'legally' was struck out, and 'under the laws thereof' inserted after the word 'State,' in compliance with the wish of some who thought the term legal equivocal, and favoring the idea that slavery was legal in a moral view." The same day Elbridge Gerry moved to extend the junction rule to "a State and part of a State," which was "disagreed to by a large majority."¹⁴

That last edit gives the clause a quirk the rest of the Constitution shares. The word "slave" never appears. The change from "legally held" to "held ... under the Laws thereof" was made so the text would not seem to call slavery lawful in a moral sense. James Iredell of North Carolina told his State's ratifying convention in 1788 that "Though the word slave is not mentioned, this is the meaning of it," and that "the northern delegates, owing to their particular scruples on the subject of slavery, did not choose the word slave to be mentioned."⁹

Full Faith and Credit: Judgments, Statutes and Enforcement

Section 1 is two sentences. The first orders every State to give "Full Faith and Credit" to "the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State." The second lets Congress "by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof." A State's laws are its Acts, its recorded documents are its Records, and the orders and judgments of its courts are its judicial Proceedings. Without the clause, a judgment won in one State would be a piece of paper in the next, and the loser could cross a State line and start over.

Congress used the second sentence at once

The First Congress passed the implementing statute on May 26, 1790. It required that State legislative acts carry the State's seal and that court records carry the clerk's attestation and a judge's certificate. Then it set the effect: "the said records and judicial proceedings authenticated as aforesaid, shall have such faith and credit given to them in every court within the United States, as they have by law or usage in the courts of the state from whence the said records are or shall be taken."¹⁵ The modern text, 28 U.S.C. § 1738, keeps the same measuring stick: authenticated acts, records and judicial proceedings "shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States and its Territories and Possessions as they have by law or usage in the courts of such State, Territory or Possession from which they are taken."¹⁶

That formula carries the whole doctrine. A judgment from another State gets the force it would have at home, no more and no less. A judgment that would bar a second suit at home bars it elsewhere too.

Judgments get the strongest protection

In Baker v. General Motors Corp. (1998), Justice Ginsburg wrote for the Court that "the full faith and credit obligation is exacting" as to judgments. A final judgment from a court with authority over the subject and the parties "qualifies for recognition throughout the land." The Court also said its decisions "support no roving 'public policy exception' to the full faith and credit due judgments."¹⁷ In plain terms, a court in State B may not decline to honor State A's judgment because State B thinks the result was unwise or because the judgment offends State B's own policy.

The older example is Fauntleroy v. Lum (1908). A Missouri court entered a judgment on an award arising out of cotton-futures dealings that were illegal in Mississippi. The winner sued on the judgment in Mississippi, and the Mississippi courts refused, on the ground that the underlying deal violated Mississippi law. The Supreme Court reversed, 5 to 4. Justice Holmes wrote that a judgment "is conclusive as to all the media concludendi" and "cannot be impeached either in or out of the state by showing that it was based upon a mistake of law." Justice White, joined by Justices Harlan, McKenna and Day, dissented.¹⁸

The Court applied the same rule in 2016 in V.L. v. E.L., a per curiam opinion. A Georgia court had entered a judgment of adoption making one of two women a legal parent of the children they had raised together. After the two separated in Alabama, the Alabama Supreme Court held that the Constitution did not require Alabama to honor the Georgia judgment. The Court reversed that ruling and wrote that "A State may not disregard the judgment of a sister State because it disagrees with the reasoning underlying the judgment or deems it to be wrong on the merits."¹⁹ The decision did not turn on the merits of the adoption. It turned on what Alabama owed a final Georgia judgment once it existed.

Statutes get weaker protection

The clause covers "public Acts" as well as judgments, but the Court has never treated a sister State's statute like a sister State's judgment. A court deciding a case with ties to two States may apply its own State's law to the dispute. What it may not do is act on "a policy of hostility to the public Acts" of the other State. That test came back before the Court in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt (2016), the second of three trips this dispute made to the Supreme Court. A man sued a California tax agency in Nevada court over conduct during a residency audit, and a Nevada jury awarded him damages. Nevada law capped damages against its own agencies at $50,000. The Nevada Supreme Court nonetheless allowed an award above that cap against California, describing California's own system of controlling its agencies as an inadequate remedy for Nevada's citizens. Justice Breyer framed the question as "Whether the Constitution permits Nevada to award damages against California agencies under Nevada law that are greater than it could award against Nevada agencies in similar circumstances," and answered "We conclude that it does not." Nevada's rule, he wrote, "employs a constitutionally impermissible 'policy of hostility to the public Acts' of a sister State."²⁰

The third trip, in 2019, did not turn on the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The Court overruled Nevada v. Hall in Hyatt III, 5 to 4, and held that "States retain their sovereign immunity from private suits brought in the courts of other States." Justice Thomas's majority opinion rested on the constitutional design more than on Section 1.²¹

Enforcement stays local

A judgment travels. The machinery for collecting it does not. Baker says that "Full faith and credit, however, does not mean that States must adopt the practices of other States regarding the time, manner, and mechanisms for enforcing judgments."¹⁷ The Court's own example came from a settlement between General Motors and a former employee in a Michigan court. It included a Michigan injunction barring his testimony in any litigation involving the company without its consent. A family in a Missouri product-liability suit subpoenaed him anyway. The Court held that the Michigan injunction could not decide the evidence question in a different suit brought by people who were not bound by it. It also noted that injunctions are ordinarily enforced by the court that issued them.¹⁷

That is why a creditor holding a judgment from another State has to register it before collecting. Idaho's version of that process is in the Idaho section of this module.

The penal-judgment exception

One category of judgment has never traveled. A State does not enforce another State's penal laws. In Huntington v. Attrill (1892), the Court set the test for deciding which laws are penal in this sense: "whether the wrong sought to be redressed is a wrong to the public, or a wrong to the individual." A New York statute made officers of a corporation personally liable to its creditors for signing a false certificate of capital. The Court held that this liability was a private remedy and not a penalty in the international sense, so a Maryland court could not refuse the New York judgment on that ground.²² A fine paid to the State is a penalty. A damage award paid to the person who was wronged is not.

Congress and the second sentence today

Section 1 has no federal agency attached and no list of covered subjects, so it works mostly through ordinary courts and the 1790 statute. Congress has gone beyond authentication at least once in recent years: 28 U.S.C. § 1738C, added in 2022. It says no person acting under color of State law may deny full faith and credit to "any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State pertaining to a marriage between 2 individuals, on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals." The same section lets the federal government sue for declaratory and injunctive relief and gives any person harmed by a violation a private right of action. A different section 1738C, passed in 1996 on the same subject, was repealed by the same 2022 law.²³

New disputes keep arising at the edges. One active example involves a county clerk in New York who declined to file a Texas civil judgment against a New York physician, citing a New York shield law. A New York judge ruled for the clerk in October 2025, reasoning from the shield law, and a press report says Texas appealed on May 15, 2026, arguing that the refusal violated the Full Faith and Credit Clause. This lesson could not confirm the appeal's current status from a court record, and it takes no side on the merits.²⁴

Privileges and Immunities: Equal Treatment for Visitors

Section 2's first clause says "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States." The Court has described its function in nearly the same terms for a century. In Toomer v. Witsell (1948), Chief Justice Vinson wrote that the clause sits between the full-faith and extradition clauses and shares their purpose: "to help fuse into one Nation a collection of independent, sovereign States." It "was designed to insure to a citizen of State A who ventures into State B the same privileges which the citizens of State B enjoy."²⁵

The clause is a rule against discrimination. It does not hand any citizen a list of rights. It says that whatever State B gives its own people in a covered area, it must not withhold from people who live in State A without a good reason. Hamilton described the same idea as "the basis of the Union."²⁶

Corfield and the first list

The earliest detailed reading came from Justice Bushrod Washington, sitting as a circuit judge, in Corfield v. Coryell (1823). He listed rights the clause protects, among them "the right of a citizen of one state to pass through, or to reside in any other state, for purposes of trade, agriculture, professional pursuits, or otherwise; to claim the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; to institute and maintain actions of any kind in the courts of the state; to take, hold and dispose of property, either real or personal." In the same opinion he upheld a New Jersey law limiting oyster-bed access to residents, reasoning that State B need not "extend to the citizens of all the other states the same advantages" in using "the common property of the citizens of [a] state."²⁷ Later Courts discarded the natural-rights theory behind the list and kept the list as a rough guide to what counts as important.

Toomer: a fee that was a hundred times higher

South Carolina charged $25 for each shrimp boat owned by a resident and $2,500 for each boat owned by the nonresidents who brought the suit. The Court held that the fee violated the clause. A State cannot single out outsiders unless "there is something to indicate that non-citizens constitute a peculiar source of the evil at which the statute is aimed," and South Carolina's reasons did not show that. The same decision held that a separate rule forcing shrimp boats to unload and pack their catch at South Carolina ports violated the Commerce Clause.²⁵

Baldwin: where the clause does not reach

The Court drew a limit in Baldwin v. Fish and Game Commission of Montana (1978). Montana required nonresident elk hunters to buy a combination license at $225, which covered one elk, one deer, one bear and birds. A resident who bought the combination paid $30. A nonresident who wanted only elk paid 25 times as much as the resident.²⁸ The Court upheld the system. Only "with respect to those 'privileges' and 'immunities' bearing upon the vitality of the Nation as a single entity" must a State treat residents and nonresidents alike, and the clause reaches "basic and essential activities, interference with which would frustrate the purposes of the formation of the Union." Recreational elk hunting was not one of them: "equality in access to Montana elk is not basic to the maintenance or well-being of the Union."²⁸ Idaho's own hunting fee schedule has the same pattern, and the Idaho section of this module compares the figures.

Camden and Piper: a living, and a city's rules

If hunting is outside the clause, earning a living is inside it. United Building and Construction Trades Council v. Mayor and Council of Camden (1984) involved a city ordinance requiring that at least 40 percent of the workers on city construction projects be Camden residents. The New Jersey court had held that the clause did not apply because the line drawn was between city residents and everyone else, not between in-state and out-of-state people. The Supreme Court disagreed: "a municipality is merely a political subdivision of the State from which its authority derives," and "what would be unconstitutional if done directly by the State can no more readily be accomplished by a city deriving its authority from the State." It treated a citizen's interest in employment on public works in another State as sufficiently "fundamental" to the promotion of interstate harmony to be covered, and sent the case back for findings on whether Camden had a substantial reason for the rule.²⁹

A year later, in Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper (1985), the Court set out the test it still uses. A Vermont resident had passed the New Hampshire bar examination but was refused admission by a court rule limiting the bar to State residents. The Court held that the rule burdened a privilege protected by the clause and then stated the second step: the clause "does not preclude discrimination against nonresidents where (i) there is a substantial reason for the difference in treatment; and (ii) the discrimination practiced against nonresidents bears a substantial relationship to the State's objective."³⁰ New Hampshire offered four justifications, including that nonresidents would be less likely to stay familiar with local rules and to do volunteer work in the State. The Court found that none met "the test of 'substantiality.'"³⁰

So the questions run in order. Does the law treat out-of-state citizens worse than residents? Does it burden a privilege that bears on the vitality of the Nation as a single entity, such as the pursuit of a common calling? If so, does the State have a substantial reason, and does the discrimination bear a substantial relationship to that reason? A law that fails the first or second question stands. A law that fails the third falls.

McBurney: public records and the limits of the clause

The most recent major clause case reached the Court in 2013 and concerns a topic reporters know well. McBurney v. Young challenged Virginia's Freedom of Information Act, which gave Virginia citizens access to public records and gave non-Virginians none. A man whose business was obtaining property records for clients argued that the exclusion interfered with his common calling. The Court was unanimous. Justice Alito wrote that the Constitution does not guarantee the existence of FOIA laws, that the law was not a protectionist measure aimed at burdening out-of-state competitors, and that access to public records is not a "fundamental" privilege. He added: "There is no contention that the Nation's unity foundered in their absence, or that it is suffering now because of the citizens-only FOIA provisions that several States have enacted."³¹ Idaho's public-records statute takes a different path from Virginia's and shows how the line looks in a State that opens its records to everyone but charges some requesters more.

Saenz: a citizen who moves

The clause protects citizens who visit. A separate question is how a new resident is treated against longtime residents of the same State. California tried in 1992 to limit new arrivals to the welfare benefits they would have received in their prior State for their first year. In Saenz v. Roe (1999), the Court held 7 to 2 that the limit violated the Fourteenth Amendment, resting on the "right of the newly arrived citizen to the same privileges and immunities enjoyed by other citizens of the same State."³² The Fourteenth Amendment's first sentence provides the text: all persons born or naturalized in the United States "are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."³³ Article IV, Section 2 protects the visitor. The Fourteenth Amendment protects the person who settles.

Extradition: Handing Over a Fugitive

The second paragraph of Section 2 says a person "charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime." The clause shuts off a refuge. Without it, a State line would work as a bar to prosecution for anyone who could reach the other side.

The drafters broadened the Confederation version in one stroke. Where the Articles reached only "treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor," the Constitution covers "other Crime." The Convention made that change on August 28 because "high misdemeanor" might have "a technical meaning too limited."³⁷

The 1793 statute and its modern descendant

Congress filled in the procedure in the same act that dealt with fugitive labor, the Act of February 12, 1793. When a governor demanded a fugitive and sent "the copy of an indictment found, or an affidavit made before a magistrate," certified by the governor, it became "the duty of the executive authority of the state or territory to which such person shall have fled, to cause him or her to be arrested and secured."³⁴ The modern statute is 18 U.S.C. § 3182. It keeps the same structure, covers the District of Columbia, and tells the receiving executive to "cause him to be arrested and secured." If the demanding State's agent does not appear "within thirty days from the time of the arrest, the prisoner may be discharged."³⁵ Congress changed the 1793 period of six months to thirty days in the 1948 revision.

Dennison: a duty without a remedy

For more than a century the Supreme Court said the duty could not be enforced. In Kentucky v. Dennison (1861), Kentucky asked the Court to order Ohio's governor to deliver a free Black man indicted in Kentucky for "assisting a slave to escape." The governor had refused. Chief Justice Taney wrote that the words "it shall be the duty" in the 1793 Act were "declaratory of the moral duty which this compact created," and that the Act "does not provide any means to compel the execution of this duty."³⁶ The Court declined to order a governor to act.

Branstad: Dennison overruled

The Court reversed course in Puerto Rico v. Branstad (1987). Puerto Rico had asked the Governor of Iowa for the extradition of a man charged with felonies who had skipped a hearing in Puerto Rico and returned to his family's home in Iowa. Iowa's governor refused after unsuccessful negotiations over the charges, and Puerto Rico sued. The Court held that federal courts could compel a governor to perform the duty. It reaffirmed one half of Dennison, that the Extradition Clause's commands are mandatory and give the asylum State's executive no discretion. It discarded the other half, the rule that federal courts could do nothing about it. Of the 1861 decision the Court wrote: "Kentucky v. Dennison is the product of another time." It added that the 1861 view of how the States relate to the federal government could not be squared with more than a century of constitutional development.³⁷

Doran: what a court in the asylum State may ask

A related question is how much a court in the State where the person is found can examine. Michigan v. Doran (1978) answered it. Arizona had charged a man with receiving and concealing stolen property and asked Michigan for his return. Michigan's governor granted extradition, and Michigan courts then ordered the man released on the ground that Arizona had not shown probable cause. The Court reversed. Interstate extradition, it said, "was intended to be a summary and mandatory executive proceeding." Once the governor has granted extradition, "a court considering release on habeas corpus can do no more than decide (a) whether the extradition documents on their face are in order; (b) whether the petitioner has been charged with a crime in the demanding state; (c) whether the petitioner is the person named in the request for extradition; and (d) whether the petitioner is a fugitive. These are historic facts readily verifiable."³⁸

Those four are the whole list. A clerk can check each from the paperwork. Whether the charge is a good one is not on it, and that question belongs to the courts of the demanding State.

The uniform act

Most States handle the procedure under the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act. Idaho's version is codified in Idaho Code title 19, chapter 45, which says in its section 19-4531 that "This chapter may be cited as the 'Uniform Criminal Extradition Act.'" Its section 19-4502 puts the duty on the governor: "it is the duty of the governor of this state to have arrested and delivered up to the executive authority of any other state of the United States any person charged in that state with treason, felony or other crime, who has fled from justice and is found in this state," subject to the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes. The Idaho section later in this module covers more of the chapter.³⁹

The Fugitive-Labor Clause and Its Repeal

The third paragraph of Section 2 is the part of the original Constitution that protected slavery most directly, and it has had no force since 1865. It produced two landmark federal cases, and a lesson on Article IV is incomplete without it. The text appears in the first section of this module and the drafting history in the second. What follows covers how the clause operated and how it ended.

What the text did

The clause reaches a person "held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another." It says such a person could not be "discharged from such Service or Labour" by "any Law or Regulation" of the State he fled to, and that he "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." The words "under the Laws thereof" came from the September 15 revision that struck "legally." The Convention's debate on August 28 spoke of "fugitive slaves and servants," and the clause's words, "Service or Labour," are broad enough to cover both. The two Supreme Court cases below each involved a person claimed as a slave.¹⁴⁹

The 1793 Act

Congress passed the first enforcement law in 1793. It authorized the person to whom labor was owed, or that person's agent, "to seize or arrest such fugitive from labour" and take him or her before a federal judge or a local magistrate. On "proof to the satisfaction of such judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit," the judge or magistrate was to give the claimant a certificate that was "sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive." Anyone who knowingly obstructed the claimant, rescued the person seized, or harbored a person after notice forfeited $500. The text says nothing about a jury or about testimony from the person seized.³⁴

Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842)

Pennsylvania passed a law in 1826 titled "An act to give effect to the provisions of the constitution of the United States relative to fugitives from labour, for the protection of free people of colour, and to prevent kidnapping." Its first section made it a felony to take a Black person out of the State by force and violence, or by fraud, with the intent to hold the person as a slave or servant. A man acting for a Maryland slaveholder was indicted under it for taking a Black woman from York County, Pennsylvania, to Maryland, and was convicted on a special verdict. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842). Every Justice agreed that the Pennsylvania law was unconstitutional, and several wrote separately.⁴⁰

Justice Story's opinion held that the clause created a right in the slaveholder, enforceable without a State's permission, and that the power to legislate on the subject belonged to Congress alone. Pennsylvania's statute therefore could not stand. His account of why the clause existed was blunt: the right was "so vital to the preservation of [the slave States'] domestic interests and institutions, that it cannot be doubted, that it constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed."⁴⁰ He also wrote that the clause "was, therefore, of the last importance to the safety and security of the southern states."⁴⁰

Prigg also contained a second holding that later mattered to free States: whether a State had to help. Story wrote that while "a difference of opinion has existed" on "whether state magistrates are bound to act" under the federal statute, "none is entertained by this court, that state magistrates may, if they choose, exercise that authority, unless prohibited by state legislation."⁴⁰ That passage left open whether State officers could be required to act, and it left States free to forbid their own officials from taking part. This lesson did not verify any later State laws on the subject.

Ableman v. Booth (1859)

The second case came from Wisconsin, where the State supreme court had freed a man held for aiding the escape of a person claimed under the Fugitive Slave Act of September 18, 1850. The Supreme Court reversed that ruling in Ableman v. Booth. Chief Justice Taney wrote that "although the State of Wisconsin is sovereign within its territorial limits to a certain extent, yet that sovereignty is limited and restricted by the Constitution of the United States," and that the federal and State governments were "separate and distinct sovereignties, acting separately and independently of each other." A State court, he held, could not release a prisoner held under the authority of a federal court.⁴¹

Superseded in 1865

The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified December 6, 1865, ended the legal basis for the clause. The National Archives' note on the amendment reads "A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment."¹ The words still appear in the engrossed text, because amendments are added to the Constitution and do not erase what they supersede. Readers should treat the paragraph as history.

New States: The Admissions Clause and Equal Footing

Article IV, Section 3, clause 1, has a short operative sentence: "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." The clause that follows says that "no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."

The problem the clause solved

Madison, writing in Federalist 43, said the Confederation had left the subject untouched: "In the articles of Confederation, no provision is found on this important subject. Canada was to be admitted of right, on her joining in the measures of the United States; and the other COLONIES, by which were evidently meant the other British colonies, at the discretion of nine States. The eventual establishment of NEW STATES seems to have been overlooked by the compilers of that instrument." The inconvenience of that gap, he wrote, and "the assumption of power into which Congress have been led by it," called for a rule. Madison saw the consent requirement as an even bargain: the precaution against partition of a State "quiets the jealousy of the larger States; as that of the smaller is quieted by a like precaution, against a junction of States without their consent."⁴²

Who decides, and by what vote

The text names no supermajority. The August 6 draft would have required "two thirds of the members present in each House." On August 29, Martin and Morris moved to strike that requirement, Morris offered a shorter substitute before a vote was taken on the motion, and the final text says only that new States "may be admitted by the Congress into this Union."⁶⁸ Idaho was admitted by an ordinary act of Congress, approved July 3, 1890.⁴³

The same clause gives the legislature of an existing State a veto over losing territory to a new State, and gives every State involved a veto over a merger. The consent comes from both the State's legislature and Congress. The August debate shows why the Convention wrote it that way: large States with Western land claims did not want to be divided against their will, and small States did not want to underwrite those claims.

Equal footing

The text does not say new States are equal to old ones. The Convention's August 29 vote to strike the sentence "the new States shall be admitted on the same terms with the original States" removed an express promise of equality from the draft, and the final clause is silent on the point. The phrase came from elsewhere. The Northwest Ordinance used it: new States were to be admitted "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever."⁵ Oklahoma's Enabling Act and Idaho's Admission Act repeat it. Idaho's act says Idaho "is hereby declared admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever."⁴³⁴⁴

The Court gave the doctrine its force in Coyle v. Smith (1911). Oklahoma's Enabling Act of 1906 said the capital "shall temporarily be at the city of Guthrie" and "shall not be changed therefrom previous to Anno Domini nineteen hundred and thirteen." In December 1910, Oklahoma passed a law moving the capital to Oklahoma City, and a resident taxpayer challenged the move as violating the Enabling Act. Justice Lurton held that the restriction could not bind the State after admission. "'This Union' was and is a union of states," he wrote, "equal in power, dignity, and authority, each competent to exert that residuum of sovereignty not delegated to the United States by the Constitution itself."⁴⁴

Coyle does not say Congress can attach no conditions to admission. The Court sorted them into groups: provisions "fulfilled by the admission of the state"; compacts or affirmative legislation within "the scope of the conceded powers of Congress over the subject"; and terms that restrict a State in matters that would otherwise belong exclusively to the State. It treated the old enabling-act clauses in which new States disclaimed title to federal land as resting on Congress's own power over those subjects and not on the State's consent. The third group fell, and the Oklahoma capital clause was in it.⁴⁴ How far Congress's power over federal land inside a State reaches today is a live question, and this lesson takes no side on it.

Territory and Property: Congress as Landlord and Governor

Section 3, clause 2, says Congress has power "to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States." The same clause adds a savings rule: "nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State."

Why the savings rule is there

The savings rule came from the argument over Western land on August 30. Carroll wanted a proviso protecting the United States' claim to "vacant lands ceded to them by the Treaty of peace." Wilson objected to inserting anything. Madison thought the Convention should say nothing or protect the States' claims too. Morris's final text protected both, and Maryland alone voted against it.¹⁰ Madison described it in Federalist 43 as "a power of very great importance," with a proviso that "was probably rendered absolutely necessary by jealousies and questions concerning the Western territory sufficiently known to the public."⁴²

Two jobs in one sentence

The clause covers two different subjects. One is the Territories, areas that are not States and which Congress governs. The other is "other Property," land and assets Congress owns inside the States, from national forests to military bases. Both flow from the same grant.

Kleppe: federal land, State law

In Kleppe v. New Mexico (1976), New Mexico challenged the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, which protected unbranded horses and burros on federal land. The State argued that the Act intruded on State sovereignty over wildlife. Justice Marshall wrote for the Court that "the furthest reaches of the power granted by the Property Clause have not yet been definitively resolved," but that the Court had "repeatedly observed" that the power over the public land "is without limitations." The clause, he wrote, does not authorize "an exercise of a general control over public policy in a State," but it does permit "an exercise of the complete power which Congress has over particular public property entrusted to it." That "complete power," the Court held, "necessarily includes the power to regulate and protect the wildlife living there." The Court also noted that "It is the Property Clause, for instance, that provides the basis for governing the Territories of the United States."⁴⁵

Dred Scott and the narrow reading

The clause had a darker moment in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). Chief Justice Taney wrote that the provision "is confined, and was intended to be confined, to the territory which at that time belonged to, or was claimed by, the United States," and "can have no influence upon a territory afterwards acquired from a foreign Government." On that reading, Congress had no power to bar slavery in the Louisiana Purchase lands, and the Missouri Compromise was void.⁴⁶ The result did not last. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery in 1865, and the Court said in Saenz v. Roe (1999) that the Fourteenth Amendment "overruled" Dred Scott on the question of citizenship for free Black Americans.³² Kleppe, decided much later, takes the broad view: the Property Clause is the basis for governing the Territories.

Downes and the Insular Cases

After the Spanish-American War, the Court had to decide whether the Constitution followed the flag. In Downes v. Bidwell (1901), it held that Congress could tax goods from Puerto Rico differently from goods moving between States, because the island was "a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States within the revenue clauses of the Constitution." Downes and the related decisions are called the Insular Cases.⁴⁷

They are still part of the law and still under attack. In United States v. Vaello Madero (2022), the Court held 8 to 1 that Congress could exclude Puerto Rico residents from Supplemental Security Income. Justice Kavanaugh's opinion rested on the Territory Clause, which "affords Congress broad authority to legislate with respect to the U. S. Territories," and on a rational-basis test drawn from earlier cases. He did not rely on the Insular Cases. Justice Gorsuch concurred separately to say "The Insular Cases have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes. They deserve no place in our law." Justice Sotomayor dissented.⁴⁸ The majority did not overrule the Insular Cases, and this lesson did not verify whether any later decision has.

The Guarantee Clause: Republican Form, Invasion and Domestic Violence

Section 4 is one sentence with three promises. The United States "shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." It "shall protect each of them against Invasion." And "on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened)," it shall protect each State "against domestic Violence." Courts and scholars call the whole sentence the Guarantee Clause (some opinions spell it Guaranty). It is the only clause in the Constitution in which the national government promises something to the States as States.

What the Framers meant by "republican"

Madison took the word up twice in the Federalist. In No. 39 he asked what "the distinctive characters of the republican form" are, and he noticed that the political writers of the day had used the word for Holland and for Venice, which "show the extreme inaccuracy with which the term has been used." His own criterion was a government that "derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people," administered by persons who hold office "during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior." It is "ESSENTIAL," he wrote, that the government come from "the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it." It is "SUFFICIENT" that its officers be appointed, directly or indirectly, by the people.⁴⁹ That is a floor, and a low one. It does not require direct democracy, an elected judiciary, or any particular voting rule.

In No. 43 he explained why the Union needed the power. "In a confederacy founded on republican principles, and composed of republican members, the superintending government ought clearly to possess authority to defend the system against aristocratic or monarchial innovations." The more intimate the union, Madison wrote, the "greater interest have the members in the political institutions of each other." He then limited the guarantee. It "supposes a pre-existing government of the form which is to be guaranteed." As long as the States keep republican forms, "they are guaranteed by the federal Constitution," and when they choose other republican forms they may "claim the federal guaranty for the latter." The "only restriction imposed on them is, that they shall not exchange republican for antirepublican Constitutions."⁴²

On invasion, Madison wrote that "the latitude of the expression" seemed to secure each State against "foreign hostility" and also against "ambitious or vindictive enterprises of its more powerful neighbors." On domestic violence he pointed to "a recent and well-known event among ourselves," the 1786 and 1787 Massachusetts uprising known as Shays's Rebellion, and he argued that "illicit combinations, for purposes of violence" could form in a majority of a small State as easily as in a county. If the State may call on its own authority to protect a county magistrate, "ought not the federal authority, in the former, to support the State authority?"⁴²

The Convention's own votes on the clause (the vote to strike the requirement of a legislative application, the vote on the word "insurrections," the addition of "or Executive," and the final 9 to 2 passage) are set out in the drafting section above. Delegates argued about the clause in terms of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, which were the 1780s examples they had in front of them.¹⁰

Three promises, three different enforcers

Republican form. Whoever enforces this promise has to decide what a State's government is, and whether it is republican. The Court's earliest answer, in 1849, gave that job to Congress. Congress has used it mainly when it admits a State's senators and representatives and, after the Civil War, when it set conditions for readmission.

Invasion. Protection against invasion needs no application from the State. It lines up with the war powers in Article I, section 8, and the President's role as commander in chief.

Domestic violence. This promise has a trigger, an application from the State's legislature, or from its executive when the legislature "cannot be convened." Congress carried out the clause by statute. The modern text is in title 10 of the U.S. Code: section 251 lets the President, "upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened," call into federal service the militia of other States and use the armed forces to suppress "an insurrection in any State against its government." Section 253 is broader. It authorizes the President to act "to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy" that so hinders the execution of State and federal law that a class of people "is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution," when the State authorities "are unable, fail, or refuse to protect" it, or that "opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States."⁵⁰ Section 253 does not wait for a State's request. Its authority draws on other parts of the Constitution as well as the Guarantee Clause, and the 1789 clause does not state the full reach of the statute.

Luther v. Borden (1849): the Court steps back

The leading case came out of Rhode Island. In 1842 the State was still governed under its 1663 colonial charter, which limited the vote. Reformers led by Thomas Dorr wrote a new "People's Constitution," held their own election, and set up a rival government. The charter government declared martial law. A militia company entered the house of Martin Luther, who supported the rival government, on June 29, 1842, to arrest him, and Luther sued the militiamen for trespass in federal court. The defendants argued that the charter government was the lawful one and that martial law justified the entry.⁵¹

Chief Justice Taney's opinion for the Court held that the question was not one for judges. "Under this article of the Constitution it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State," he wrote. "For as the United States guarantee to each State a republican government, Congress must necessarily decide what government is established in the State before it can determine whether it is republican or not." When senators and representatives are admitted, that decision "is binding on every other department of the government, and could not be questioned in a judicial tribunal."⁵¹ On the domestic-violence clause, Taney noted that Congress had given the decision to the President by statute. "The President must, of necessity, decide which is the government, and which party is unlawfully arrayed against it, before he can perform the duty imposed upon him by the act of Congress." He asked whether a court could, "while the parties were actually contending in arms for the possession of the government, call witnesses before it and inquire which party represented a majority of the people."⁵¹

Luther lost. The Court did not say Rhode Island's charter government was better than Dorr's. It said the choice was not the judiciary's.

Texas v. White (1869): the clause after the war

The Guarantee Clause came back at the end of the Civil War. In Texas v. White, the Court noted that in the guarantee clause "a plain distinction is made between a State and the government of a State," and that the word "State" there seems to mean "a people or political community, as distinguished from a government."⁵² Chief Justice Chase wrote that once the Confederate government in Texas collapsed, the national government needed a basis to rebuild State government, and that basis was "the obligation of the United States to guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government," which in a rebellion that takes over a State government "seems to be a necessary complement" to the power to suppress insurrection.⁵² Congress had passed the Reconstruction Acts in March 1867, which the opinion describes as aimed at establishing "loyal and republican State governments."

Pacific States (1912): initiative and referendum

In 1902 Oregon amended its constitution to reserve to the people the power to enact or reject laws at the polls, independent of the legislative assembly. In 1906 voters used the initiative to pass a law taxing telephone and telegraph companies 2 percent of their gross revenue from Oregon business. The State sued the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company to collect, and the company answered that the initiative had destroyed Oregon's republican form of government, so the tax law was void. The Supreme Court framed the "single issue" as "whether the enforcement of that provision, because of its political character, is exclusively committed to Congress, or is judicial in its character." It held the issue political. The company's attack, the Court said, was addressed "to the framework and political character of the government by which the statute levying the tax was passed," and amounted to a demand that the State "establish its right to exist as a state, republican in form." The Court dismissed the writ of error for want of jurisdiction.⁵³ The decision did not say that initiative and referendum are republican in the Framers' sense. It said the Court would not answer that question.

Baker v. Carr (1962): a narrow door and a wide one

The line of cases that began with Luther sometimes hardened into a rule that no Guarantee Clause claim could be heard. In Baker v. Carr, Tennessee voters challenged a 1901 apportionment law that gave some rural counties far more representation than urban ones. The Court held that the claim arose under the Equal Protection Clause and was justiciable. It also said why the Guarantee Clause had failed in earlier cases. "The only significance that Luther could have for our immediate purposes," Justice Brennan wrote, is "its holding that the Guaranty Clause is not a repository of judicially manageable standards which a court could utilize independently in order to identify a State's lawful government."⁵⁴ The Court held the claim before it "neither rests upon nor implicates the Guaranty Clause."⁵⁴ That move turned the apportionment issue into a Fourteenth Amendment problem and left the Guarantee Clause where it was.

New York v. United States (1992): the door left ajar

New York challenged a federal radioactive-waste law and argued among other things that it violated the Guarantee Clause. Justice O'Connor wrote that the Court approached the issue "with some trepidation, because the Guarantee Clause has been an infrequent basis for litigation throughout our history," and that in most cases the Court had found the claims "nonjusticiable under the 'political question' doctrine." She also recorded that "this view has not always been accepted": a group of earlier decisions had reached the merits of Guarantee Clause claims without any suggestion that they were not justiciable, and later decisions suggested "that perhaps not all claims under the Guarantee Clause present nonjusticiable political questions." Then she stopped. "We need not resolve this difficult question today." Even assuming the claim was justiciable, the law's spending and commerce provisions did not "deny any State a republican form of government."⁵⁵

Rucho v. Common Cause (2019)

The most recent Supreme Court word is a sentence in Rucho, the partisan gerrymandering case. The Chief Justice, writing for a 5 to 4 Court, wrote that the objection that legislators were choosing their voters "seems like an objection more properly grounded in the Guarantee Clause of Article IV, § 4," and added that "this Court has several times concluded, however, that the Guarantee Clause does not provide the basis for a justiciable claim," citing Pacific States.⁵⁶

Where that leaves the clause

The answer depends on which promise. For "republican form," the courts have held that the question is political and for Congress, and the Court has repeatedly declined to resolve whether that holds for every claim. For domestic violence, the President and Congress act under the statutes above. For invasion, the political branches act under war powers. The clause is better described as a power and a duty of the national government than as a right a State or a citizen can sue to enforce. Scholars do not agree on whether courts should have been more willing to enforce it, and the Court's own opinions say the question is open.

National Guard disputes after 2025

The clause's domestic-violence language, and the statutes that carry it out, entered the news again in 2025 when the President sent National Guard members to cities over the objections of State governors. That dispute is mostly about a different statute, 10 U.S.C. § 12406, which lets the President call the Guard into federal service when he "is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States," and not about sections 251 to 253. On December 23, 2025, the Supreme Court denied a stay application in Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443, 607 U.S. ___ (2025), in a short unsigned order. The Court said that "regular forces" in section 12406(3) "likely refers to the regular forces of the United States military," so the President must be "unable" with the military "to execute the laws of the United States" before he can federalize the Guard under that section. Because the Posse Comitatus Act bars the military from executing the laws except where the Constitution or an Act of Congress allows it, the Court wrote that "[a]t this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois." Justice Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented and wrote that the Court had "raised an argument that respondents waived below," and Justice Gorsuch also dissented. That makes the vote 6 to 3 to leave the district court's restraining order in place while the case continues. It was a ruling on an interim application, not a final decision on the merits.⁵⁷ The Insurrection Act sections quoted above are a different grant of authority from section 12406, and the dissent itself cites section 252 for the proposition that the Act authorizes the use of troops to "enforce the laws."

Myths and Misreadings

Questions Readers Ask

Does Idaho have to honor a judgment from Oregon?

Yes, if the Oregon court had jurisdiction and the judgment is final. The collection process is Idaho's. Under Idaho Code title 10, chapter 13, a copy of the judgment "certified in accordance with the act of congress" can be filed with a district court clerk, and once filed it has the same effect as an Idaho district court judgment.⁵⁸

Can Idaho charge a nonresident more for a hunting license?

Yes, within limits. Baldwin held that a State may charge nonresidents more for recreational hunting licenses, and the Idaho fee schedule does so.²⁸⁵⁹ Whether a particular fee gap is too large is a question this lesson cannot answer from the cases, which give no number.

What if a governor refuses to hand over a fugitive?

Federal courts can order compliance. Branstad held that the duty is mandatory and that a federal court can compel it.³⁷

Does the Constitution still require return of people who escape from slavery?

No. The Thirteenth Amendment superseded that portion of the text. The clause is still printed in the engrossed Constitution, with the National Archives noting that it has been superseded.¹

Who decides whether a State's government is "republican"?

Under Luther v. Borden, Congress, and the President when domestic violence is at issue. The Court has repeatedly said that judges do not make that call, and in New York v. United States it declined to say whether every such claim is closed to courts.⁵¹⁵⁵

Can Congress admit a State by ordinary statute?

Yes. The clause says new States "may be admitted by the Congress into this Union" and gives no supermajority rule. Idaho's admission was a statute, the Admission Act of July 3, 1890.⁴³

Is the Property Clause a limit or a grant?

It is a grant, and its outer limits are unsettled. Kleppe called Congress's power over federal land "complete" as to particular property, and noted that "the furthest reaches of the power" had "not yet been definitively resolved."⁴⁵

Landmark Cases

Each opinion was checked against its text. Pin cites are given where the lesson confirmed the page against the U.S. Reports. Some cases were read on Cornell LII without confirming page numbers, and those carry no pin.

The Idaho Connection

Idaho touches nearly every clause in Article IV, and in a few places it is one of the clearest examples in the country. This section runs through the clauses in order, then takes up the land question, the one that most shapes Idaho's relationship with the Union.

Territory, admission and "republican in form"

Congress created the Territory of Idaho by an act approved March 3, 1863, "An Act to provide a temporary Government for the Territory of Idaho."⁶⁰ That was the Territory Clause at work. Congress drew the boundaries, set up the government, and answered for it until statehood.

Statehood came by the Admission Act of July 3, 1890, chapter 656 of the 51st Congress. The act opens with findings. The people of the Territory had formed a constitution through a convention that met on "the fourth day of July, eighteen hundred and eighty-nine," and ratified it "at an election held therefor on the first Tuesday in November, eighteen hundred and eighty-nine." Congress recited that the constitution "is republican in form and is in conformity with the Constitution of the United States." That recital is the Guarantee Clause in practice: when Congress admits a State, it has decided the new government is republican, which is the decision Luther v. Borden says belongs to Congress. Then came the grant of equal status: Idaho "is hereby declared admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever."⁴³

The same act granted the State "sections numbered sixteen and thirty-six in every township" for the support of common schools, with equivalent lands where those sections had been sold, and required that school lands be sold only at public sale, with the proceeds forming "a permanent school fund, the interest of which only shall be expended in the support of said schools."⁴³ Those grants are why Idaho has State endowment lands today. The Idaho Department of Lands says it manages about 2.5 million acres of State endowment trust land under a constitutional mandate to maximize long-term financial returns, mainly for public schools.⁶¹

Federal land, the disclaimer and the Property Clause

Article XXI, section 19 of the Idaho Constitution contains an ordinance, accepted as a condition of statehood, in which "the people of the state of Idaho do agree and declare that we forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof," and that Indian lands "shall remain under the absolute jurisdiction and control of the congress of the United States."⁶²

The result is that most of Idaho is federal land. The Congressional Research Service, in a report updated in September 2026 using data as of September 30, 2024, put federal land in Idaho at 32,785,766 acres of the State's 52,933,120, or 61.9 percent. By agency, that is 20,451,561 acres managed by the Forest Service, 11,768,027 by the Bureau of Land Management, 512,086 by the National Park Service, 51,002 by the Fish and Wildlife Service and 3,090 by the Department of Defense.⁶³ In the report's first table only Nevada (79.8 percent) and Utah (63.1 percent) have a larger share than Idaho. Alaska is next at 60.8 percent.

The legal sources point in different directions, and this lesson takes no side. Kleppe reads the Property Clause to give Congress complete power over particular federal property. Coyle v. Smith says a State's equality with other States cannot be reduced by a term in its admission act on matters that belong to the State, while also treating land disclaimers as resting on Congress's own power over the subject.⁴⁵⁴⁴ People who argue that Idaho's lands should be transferred to the State and people who argue that the federal government owns and manages them both cite parts of this material. Court rulings that would settle the question for Idaho specifically were not found in this lesson's research.

Full faith and credit in the Idaho Code

Idaho's version of the process for collecting a sister-State judgment is title 10, chapter 13. Section 10-1301 defines a "foreign judgment" as a judgment, decree or order "of a court of the United States or of any other court," and certain administrative support and parentage orders, "that is entitled to full faith and credit in this state." Section 10-1302 lets a certified copy be filed with a district court clerk, who "shall treat the foreign judgment in the same manner as a judgment of the district court of this state." Once filed it "has the same effect and is subject to the same procedures, defenses and proceedings for reopening, vacating, or staying as a judgment of a district court of this state." Custody and child-support terms carry special limits.⁶⁴⁵⁸

Section 10-1309, added in 2015, is about something else: orders issued under "the law of another country." It bars Idaho courts and agencies from recognizing or enforcing a foreign-country order that is "manifestly incompatible with the public policy of this state," and defines that as an order issued in violation of due process "substantially similar to that guaranteed by the constitutions of the United States and the state of Idaho."⁶⁵ Article IV does not reach foreign countries, so this section rests on the State's own law. On the reasoning of Baker, which found no "roving 'public policy exception'" for judgments from other States, Idaho could not use a device like this against a sister State's judgment.

Privileges and immunities in Idaho law

Two Idaho provisions are easy to confuse with Article IV, section 2. Idaho Const. art. I, section 2 says that "no special privileges or immunities shall ever be granted that may not be altered, revoked, or repealed by the legislature."⁶⁶ That is a limit on Idaho's own legislature. It is a different provision from the federal clause.

The federal clause shows up in Idaho in nonresident fees. Idaho Code section 36-416 sets the schedule of license fees for hunting, fishing and trapping. On the schedule as the Legislature's website printed it for this lesson, a resident combination license costs $37.00 and a nonresident combination license $262.25. A deer tag costs a resident $23.00 and a nonresident $350.00. A resident trapping license costs $28.00 and a nonresident's $330.00.⁵⁹ Baldwin says access to recreational big-game hunting does not fall within the clause, and so a State may charge nonresidents more for it. The lesson did not confirm the date of the schedule's most recent amendment, and fees change by statute, so check the current Code before relying on any number.

The public records law shows the opposite choice. Idaho Code section 74-102(1) says "Every person has a right to examine and take a copy of any public record of this state." Virginia's citizens-only law was upheld in McBurney. Idaho never wrote one into its statute, so a requester from another State has the same right as a resident.⁶⁷³¹ A requester must still follow the written-request rules in the same section.

Extradition in Idaho

Idaho's Uniform Criminal Extradition Act is Idaho Code title 19, chapter 45. Section 19-4502 imposes the duty on the governor. Section 19-4506 goes beyond the Constitution's text. It allows the governor to surrender a person who committed an act in Idaho "or in a third state" that intentionally resulted in a crime in the demanding State, even though the accused "was not in that state at the time of the commission of the crime, and has not fled therefrom."⁶⁸ That covers a person who never set foot in the demanding State.

Section 19-4510 sets out the arrested person's rights. No one arrested on a governor's warrant may be handed over "unless he shall first be taken forthwith before a judge or magistrate of a court of record in this state, who shall inform him of the demand made for his surrender and of the crime with which he is charged, and that he has the right to demand and procure legal counsel." If the person says he wants to test the legality of the arrest, the judge "shall fix a reasonable time" to apply for a writ of habeas corpus.⁶⁹ That hearing is where the four Doran questions get asked. Section 19-4525 adds that a person brought back to Idaho by extradition or after waiving it "may be tried in this state for other crimes" charged here as well as the one in the requisition.⁷⁰

The governor and the guarantee

The Guarantee Clause asks for an application from a State's legislature "or of the Executive." In Idaho the executive side is Idaho Const. art. IV, section 4, which makes the governor "commander-in-chief of the military forces of the state, except when they shall be called into actual service of the United States" and gives the governor "power to call the militia to execute the laws, to suppress insurrection, or to repel invasion." Section 5 vests "the supreme executive power" in the governor, who "shall see that the laws are faithfully executed."⁷¹⁷² Under 10 U.S.C. § 251, a request from an Idaho governor, when the Legislature cannot be convened, is the trigger for federal help against an insurrection.⁵⁰ The lesson found no Idaho statute that spells out the request procedure and does not claim there is none.

Moving the border: the Greater Idaho proposal

Article IV, section 3, clause 1 bars forming a new State "within the Jurisdiction of any other State" and forming a State "by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress." A long-running movement in eastern Oregon, known as Greater Idaho, asks that Oregon counties become part of Idaho. On the Idaho side, the Legislature's own record shows that House Joint Memorial 1 of 2023, "Oregon and Idaho Borders," states that "the Idaho Legislature stands ready to begin discussions with the Oregon Legislature regarding the potential to relocate the Oregon/Idaho state boundary." The House adopted it on February 15, 2023, by a vote of 41 to 28 with 1 absent, and it was sent to the Senate and referred to the State Affairs Committee. The legislative record that this lesson read shows no further action on it in the Senate that year. A joint memorial is a statement, not a law, and it binds no one. The other claims commonly made about the movement, that voters in a number of Oregon counties approved measures asking county officials to promote the idea and that in May 2026 Wallowa County voters ended their county's requirement that commissioners meet to discuss it, come only from the Wikipedia article on the movement. This lesson did not confirm them from an election record, so treat those two claims as unconfirmed.⁷³ Whether a transfer of counties would be governed by section 3, by the Compact Clause of Article I, section 10, or by both is a question the lesson did not research. On their text, both clauses call for the consent of Congress: Article I, section 10 says no State shall, "without the Consent of Congress," enter into "any Agreement or Compact with another State."

Where This Shows Up for Officials, Reporters and Citizens

The people and places in these scenarios are invented.

The county clerk and a certified judgment

The clerk of Linden County receives a certified copy of a judgment from a court in another State, along with a creditor's request to file it. The clerk's job is ministerial. Under Idaho Code 10-1302 the judgment is filed and treated like a district court judgment, and the debtor's defenses are the ones available against a district court judgment. The clerk does not decide whether the other court got it right. Fauntleroy and Baker say the receiving State may not reopen the merits, and the Idaho statute puts the collection steps in the clerk's hands.⁵⁸¹⁷¹⁸

The magistrate and a governor's warrant

Magistrate Okafor of the Linden County court has a man in front of her on a governor's warrant from another State. Under 19-4510 she must tell him what he is charged with, that he has the right to counsel, and that he can seek habeas corpus. If he does, the hearing is narrow. Doran gives four questions: are the papers in order on their face, is he charged with a crime in the demanding State, is he the person named, and is he a fugitive. Whether the charge is a good one is for the demanding State's courts.⁶⁹³⁸

The city council and a residents-first rule

The council of Alder Springs is considering an ordinance requiring that 40 percent of the workers on city construction contracts be city residents. That is close to the ordinance in Camden, where the Court held that the Privileges and Immunities Clause applied to a city rule favoring its own residents on public works, and sent the case back for findings on whether the city had a substantial reason. The council would need a record that explains why nonresidents are the source of a specific problem, and that the rule is closely related to solving it.²⁹³⁰

The reporter checking a claim about the Guard

A candidate says the Constitution "guarantees" a governor can stop federal troops from entering a State. A reporter checking the claim should find that the Guarantee Clause says nothing like that. It requires the United States to protect each State against invasion and, on application, against domestic violence. How far the President may go in deploying the Guard or the military over a governor's objection turns on specific statutes, including sections 251 to 253 and 12406 of title 10, and on a dispute still being worked out in the courts. The 2025 Supreme Court order in Trump v. Illinois concerned section 12406, and it was an interim ruling on a stay application.⁵⁰⁵⁷

The public records requester from out of State

A reporter based in another State asks an Idaho agency for records. Idaho Code 74-102 gives the right to "every person," so the requester's home State is not a ground for refusal. McBurney shows that a State may write a citizens-only rule, and Idaho did not.⁶⁷³¹

The legislator drafting a border resolution

A legislator in a State bordering Oregon drafts a resolution endorsing a proposal to move the boundary. The text of Article IV, section 3 requires the consent of "the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress" for forming a State from parts of States. A draft should say which of those it is, or say plainly that it only states support. Whether a particular measure counts as consent is a question the text leaves to the legislatures and Congress.²

The student asking whether the United States is "a republic, not a democracy"

The Guarantee Clause promises a "Republican Form of Government." Madison's definition in Federalist 39 asks that the government derive its powers "directly or indirectly from the great body of the people" and be administered by officers serving for a limited period or during good behavior. That is a floor. It leaves the States free to choose how voters take part, and the Supreme Court has declined to rule on whether the initiative and referendum fit.⁴⁹⁵³

Related Modules

• Module 1: From the Charters to Philadelphia (the Convention's work)
• Module 2: Article I: Congress (the Compact Clause, war powers and the militia)
• Module 3: Article II: The President (commander in chief and the duty to execute the laws)
• Module 4: Article III: The Courts (political questions and suits between States)
• Module 5: Federalism and the States
• Module 6: Amending the Constitution
• Module 13: The Preamble (the Preamble's reference to "domestic Tranquility")
• Module 15: Article VI: Debts, Supremacy and the Oath
• Module 16: Article VII: Ratification
• Module 24: The Tenth Amendment (anti-commandeering and New York v. United States)
• Module 25: The Eleventh Amendment (State sovereign immunity)
• Module 27: The Thirteenth Amendment (the end of the fugitive-labor clause)
• Module 28: The Fourteenth Amendment (citizenship and the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States)
• Articles of Confederation, Lesson 2: The Thirteen Articles, Clause by Clause (Article IV of the Articles)
• Articles of Confederation, Lesson 4: The Land Ordinances and the Northwest Ordinance
• Course index: The United States Constitution

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• National Archives, The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription
• National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27
• Madison's Notes of the Debates, August 6, 1787 (Committee of Detail report)
• Madison's Notes, August 28, 1787 (privileges, extradition and fugitives)
• Madison's Notes, August 29, 1787 (full faith, fugitive-labor clause and admission of States)
• Madison's Notes, August 30, 1787 (new States, property and the guarantee)
• Madison's Notes, September 1, 1787 (full faith and credit)
• Madison's Notes, September 3, 1787
• Madison's Notes, September 12, 1787 (Committee of Style report)
• Madison's Notes, September 15, 1787
• The Founders' Constitution, Art. IV, sec. 2, cl. 3, Doc. 5: James Iredell, North Carolina ratifying convention, July 29, 1788
• Articles of Confederation (Avalon Project)
• The Northwest Ordinance, July 13, 1787 (Avalon Project)
• The Federalist No. 39 (Avalon Project)
• The Federalist No. 42 (Avalon Project)
• The Federalist No. 43 (Avalon Project)
• The Federalist No. 80 (Avalon Project)
• Act of May 26, 1790, 1 Stat. 122 (GovInfo)
• Act of February 12, 1793, 1 Stat. 302 (GovInfo)
• Act of March 3, 1863, 12 Stat. 808, Idaho Territory (GovInfo)
• Idaho Admission Act, July 3, 1890, 26 Stat. 215 (GovInfo)
• 28 U.S.C. § 1738 (Cornell LII)
• 28 U.S.C. § 1738C (Cornell LII)
• 18 U.S.C. § 3182 (Cornell LII)
• 10 U.S.C. § 251 (Cornell LII)
• 10 U.S.C. § 252 (Cornell LII)
• 10 U.S.C. § 253 (Cornell LII)

Supreme Court Opinions

• Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842) (Library of Congress)
• Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1 (1849) (Library of Congress)
• Ableman v. Booth, 62 U.S. 506 (1859) (Library of Congress)
• Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) (Cornell LII)
• Kentucky v. Dennison, 65 U.S. 66 (1861) (Library of Congress)
• Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869) (Cornell LII)
• Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U.S. 657 (1892) (Library of Congress)
• Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 (1901) (Library of Congress)
• Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U.S. 230 (1908) (Cornell LII)
• Coyle v. Smith, 221 U.S. 559 (1911) (Library of Congress)
• Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Oregon, 223 U.S. 118 (1912) (Library of Congress)
• Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 385 (1948) (Library of Congress)
• Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) (Library of Congress)
• Kleppe v. New Mexico, 426 U.S. 529 (1976) (Library of Congress)
• Baldwin v. Fish and Game Commission of Montana, 436 U.S. 371 (1978) (Library of Congress)
• Michigan v. Doran, 439 U.S. 282 (1978) (Library of Congress)
• United Building and Construction Trades Council v. Camden, 465 U.S. 208 (1984) (Library of Congress)
• Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper, 470 U.S. 274 (1985) (Cornell LII)
• Puerto Rico v. Branstad, 483 U.S. 219 (1987) (Library of Congress)
• New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) (Library of Congress)
• Baker v. General Motors Corp., 522 U.S. 222 (1998) (Cornell LII)
• Saenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489 (1999) (Library of Congress)
• McBurney v. Young, 569 U.S. 221 (2013) (Library of Congress)
• Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 578 U.S. 171 (2016) (Library of Congress)
• V.L. v. E.L., 577 U.S. 404 (2016) (Cornell LII)
• Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 587 U.S. 230 (2019) (Cornell LII)
• Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. 684 (2019) (Cornell LII)
• United States v. Vaello Madero, 596 U.S. 159 (2022) (Cornell LII)
• Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443 (Dec. 23, 2025), order and opinions (Supreme Court)

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• Congressional Research Service, Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data, R42346 (EveryCRSReport copy)
• Idaho House Joint Memorial 1 (2023), Oregon and Idaho Borders (Idaho Legislature)
• Greater Idaho (Wikipedia), source for the Oregon county-vote claims only; not a primary source
• WWLP, Texas appeals New York ruling on abortion shield law (press report)
• Jurist, Judge dismisses Texas bid to enforce abortion judgment against New York doctor (press report)

Idaho Sources

• Idaho Const. art. I, § 2
• Idaho Const. art. IV, § 4 (governor as commander of the militia)
• Idaho Const. art. IV, § 5 (supreme executive power)
• Idaho Const. art. XXI, § 19 (disclaimer of public lands)
• Idaho Code § 10-1301 (foreign judgment defined)
• Idaho Code § 10-1302 (filing of foreign judgment)
• Idaho Code § 10-1309 (foreign-country orders and public policy)
• Idaho Code § 19-4502 (duty of governor)
• Idaho Code § 19-4506 (persons not present in demanding State)
• Idaho Code § 19-4510 (rights of accused person)
• Idaho Code § 19-4525 (no immunity from other prosecution)
• Idaho Code § 19-4531 (short title)
• Idaho Code § 36-416 (license fees)
• Idaho Code § 74-102 (right to examine public records)
• Idaho Department of Lands, About Us

Footnotes

1. National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27, note at the Thirteenth Amendment, which reads "A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment." Art. IV, § 2, cl. 3 is printed in the transcription of the engrossed text.
2. U.S. Const. art. IV, §§ 1 to 4, as transcribed by the National Archives.
3. Articles of Confederation, art. IV, in the Avalon Project text. Madison's notes of August 28, 1787 record the change from "high misdemeanor" to "other crime."
4. The Federalist No. 42 (Madison), Avalon Project.
5. Northwest Ordinance, July 13, 1787, Avalon Project text: the "equal footing" language on admission, the republican-government condition and the fugitive-labor rule in the articles of compact.
6. Madison's notes, August 6, 1787 (report of the Committee of Detail, arts. XIV to XVIII).
7. Madison's notes, August 28, 1787 (privileges and immunities, extradition, and the motion on fugitive slaves and servants).
8. Madison's notes, August 29, 1787 (full faith and credit, the fugitive-labor clause, and the admission article). The Madison notes' footnotes to some votes differ from the main text, and this lesson follows the main text.
9. The Founders' Constitution, Art. IV, sec. 2, cl. 3, Doc. 5: James Iredell, North Carolina ratifying convention, July 29, 1788 (Elliot 4:176).
10. Madison's notes, August 30, 1787 (new States, the Territory and Property Clause, and the guarantee article). The vote on the guarantee clause as amended is given in the transcript as 9 to 2, with Delaware and Maryland opposed.
11. Madison's notes, September 1, 1787 (the full-faith clause and the vote on Congress's power to prescribe effect).
12. Madison's notes, September 3, 1787.
13. Madison's notes, September 12, 1787 (report of the Committee of Style).
14. Madison's notes, September 15, 1787 (final amendments, including "under the laws thereof" and the junction rule).
15. Act of May 26, 1790, ch. 11, 1 Stat. 122, GovInfo.
16. 28 U.S.C. § 1738, Cornell LII.
17. Baker v. General Motors Corp., 522 U.S. 222 (1998), Cornell LII. This lesson did not confirm pin pages for the quotations.
18. Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U.S. 230 (1908), Cornell LII.
19. V.L. v. E.L., 577 U.S. 404 (2016) (per curiam), Cornell LII. This lesson did not confirm pin pages.
20. Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 578 U.S. 171 (2016), Library of Congress.
21. Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 587 U.S. 230 (2019), Cornell LII. The opinion overruled Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410 (1979).
22. Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U.S. 657, 668 (1892), Library of Congress.
23. 28 U.S.C. § 1738C, Cornell LII.
24. WWLP, "Texas appeals NY ruling on abortion shield law" and Jurist, "Judge dismisses Texas bid to enforce abortion judgment against New York doctor". Both are press reports. This lesson did not open a court record and did not confirm the appeal's status.
25. Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 385 (1948), Library of Congress.
26. The Federalist No. 80 (Hamilton), Avalon Project.
27. Corfield v. Coryell, 6 F. Cas. 546 (No. 3,230) (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1823), as quoted in Baldwin, 436 U.S. 371 (1978), and in Piper, 470 U.S. 274 (1985). Year: the Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873), say the case was "decided by Mr. Justice Washington in the Circuit Court for the District of Pennsylvania in 1823." Baldwin and Piper print the year as 1825; 1823 is the date this lesson uses. This lesson did not read the circuit opinion itself.
28. Baldwin v. Fish and Game Commission of Montana, 436 U.S. 371 (1978), Library of Congress.
29. United Building and Construction Trades Council v. Mayor and Council of Camden, 465 U.S. 208 (1984), Library of Congress.
30. Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper, 470 U.S. 274 (1985), Cornell LII.
31. McBurney v. Young, 569 U.S. 221 (2013), Library of Congress.
32. Saenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489 (1999), Library of Congress, including the opinion's footnote on Dred Scott and the Privileges and Immunities Clause.
33. National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27, Fourteenth Amendment, § 1.
34. Act of February 12, 1793, ch. 7, 1 Stat. 302, GovInfo.
35. 18 U.S.C. § 3182, Cornell LII.
36. Kentucky v. Dennison, 65 U.S. (24 How.) 66 (1861), Library of Congress. The 1861 pin page of 107 comes from the citation in Doran and was not checked against the original.
37. Puerto Rico v. Branstad, 483 U.S. 219 (1987), Library of Congress.
38. Michigan v. Doran, 439 U.S. 282 (1978), Library of Congress.
39. Idaho Code § 19-4502, Idaho Legislature, and § 19-4531, Idaho Legislature.
40. Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 539 (1842), Library of Congress.
41. Ableman v. Booth, 62 U.S. (21 How.) 506 (1859), Library of Congress.
42. The Federalist No. 43 (Madison), Avalon Project.
43. Act of July 3, 1890, ch. 656, 26 Stat. 215, GovInfo (admission of Idaho), preamble and §§ 1, 4 and 5.
44. Coyle v. Smith, 221 U.S. 559 (1911), Library of Congress.
45. Kleppe v. New Mexico, 426 U.S. 529 (1976), Library of Congress.
46. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), Cornell LII. This lesson did not confirm pin pages.
47. Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 (1901), Library of Congress.
48. United States v. Vaello Madero, 596 U.S. 159 (2022), Cornell LII. This lesson did not verify whether any later decision has overruled the Insular Cases.
49. The Federalist No. 39 (Madison), Avalon Project.
50. 10 U.S.C. §§ 251, 252 and 253, Cornell LII.
51. Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. (7 How.) 1, 42 to 43 (1849), Library of Congress.
52. Texas v. White, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 700, 721 and 728 (1869), Cornell LII.
53. Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Oregon, 223 U.S. 118 (1912), Library of Congress.
54. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 209 and 223 (1962), Library of Congress.
55. New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 184 to 186 (1992), Library of Congress.
56. Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. 684 (2019), Cornell LII. This lesson did not confirm pin pages.
57. Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443, 607 U.S. ___ (U.S. Dec. 23, 2025) (order denying application for stay; Kavanaugh, J., concurring in the judgment; Alito, J., joined by Thomas, J., dissenting; Gorsuch, J., dissenting), Supreme Court; docket entry at supremecourt.gov; dissents also at Cornell LII.
58. Idaho Code § 10-1302, Idaho Legislature.
59. Idaho Code § 36-416, Idaho Legislature. The fee table is quoted as printed on the page this lesson opened. This lesson did not confirm the date of its latest amendment.
60. Act of March 3, 1863, ch. 117, 12 Stat. 808, GovInfo. This lesson read the title and boundary provisions on the first page only.
61. Idaho Department of Lands, About Us.
62. Idaho Const. art. XXI, § 19, Idaho Legislature.
63. Congressional Research Service, Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data, R42346 (updated September 14, 2026), Tables 1 and 2, EveryCRSReport copy. The figures cover five agencies and exclude other federal lands.
64. Idaho Code § 10-1301, Idaho Legislature.
65. Idaho Code § 10-1309, Idaho Legislature.
66. Idaho Const. art. I, § 2, Idaho Legislature.
67. Idaho Code § 74-102(1), Idaho Legislature.
68. Idaho Code § 19-4506, Idaho Legislature.
69. Idaho Code § 19-4510, Idaho Legislature.
70. Idaho Code § 19-4525, Idaho Legislature.
71. Idaho Const. art. IV, § 4, Idaho Legislature.
72. Idaho Const. art. IV, § 5, Idaho Legislature.
73. Idaho House Joint Memorial 1 (2023), Idaho Legislature bill page, showing the House adoption vote of 41-28-1 on February 15, 2023 and referral to Senate State Affairs. County-vote claims: Greater Idaho (Wikipedia), a secondary source; this lesson did not confirm those county dates or vote counts from an election record.