In theory, a Congress wants to be able to use the Guarantee Clause to protect basic rights of citizens against authoritarian and tyrannical government. It has been done before. After the Civil War, Radical Republicans in Congress found constitutional power to rebuild the South primarily in the Guarantee Clause, which they used to protect the rights of black Americans from revisionist governments.
Since Reconstruction, however, no Congress has wanted to use the Guarantee Clause to protect the rights and liberties of Americans. It is a vestige of our constitutional history, which has been ruined by disuse.
The same applies to sections 2 and 3 of the 14th Amendment. Part 2 provides that “representatives shall be distributed among a number of States according to their respective numbers, counting the total number of persons in each State, except Indians are not taxed.” It then states that if the right to vote for federal office is “denied” or “shortened in any way, except participation in rebellion” to “any male resident any state” of such a state, the “representative base there shall be reduced” in proportion to the denial in question.
Section 3 also deals with representation. It says
No person may become a Senator or Representative in Congress, or an elect for President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States of America, or under any Which State, formerly under oath, as a member of Congress, or as an official of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, in support of the Constitution of the United States, shall participate in riots or insurrection against the same , or give aid and consolation to the their enemies.
The purpose of section 2 was to invalidate the Thirteenth clause of the Constitution and prevent the state government from disenfranchising Black voters. And the purpose of season 3 was to prevent former Confederate leaders from holding federal and state office. But while the 14th Amendment gives Congress the power to enforce its provisions by “appropriate law,” Congress has never exercised the ability to deny the right to represent states that violate its right to vote. citizens, nor use the ability to disqualify legislators who have engaged in acts of rebellion or insurrection. After January 6, representatives Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeal to the National Assembly to investigate and expel the members who aided the attack, but their requests went nowhere.
Here you can see why I think it is important to talk about these seemingly idle terms. As recent events have made clear, powerful reactionaries are waging a successful war against American democracy using the anti-political tyranny of the American political system, hide their views in a distorted version of our Constitution, where self-rule means minorities and bugaboos. of right-wing culture warriors are somehow “deeply rooted” in our “history and tradition”.
But the Republic is not defenseless. The Constitution gives our elected officials the power to limit a lawless Supreme Court, protect citizens from the “evil laws” of the states, punish those states for disenfranchising residents to vote. people and expelled the cultists from Congress.
