|
|
| "It must be acknowledged that the term republic is a very vague application in every language...Were I to assign to the term a precise and definte idea, I would say purely and simply it means a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government ismore or less republican in proportion as it has in its compostion more or less of the ingredients of direct action of the citizen." - thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816, ME 15:19
|
Does The Initiative Process Run Contrary To A Republican Form Of Government? A recurring them in discussions of the initiative and referendum (“l&R”) process has been whether, and to what extent, l&R violates that portion of Article IV, section 4 of the U.S. Constitution providing that the United States shall guarantee every state a “republican form of government —the Guarantee Clause.” In short, it doesn't.d In 1912, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to invalidate Oregon’s l&R system on the grounds that whether a state had a republican form of government was a political question for Congress, and therefore non-justiciable. The Court made clear that it was the sole responsibility of Congress to decide what constitutes a republican form of government. Congress’s actions over the years have shown that they do not believe that the initiative process is inconsistent with republican government as evidenced by the fact that they allowed Oklahoma and Alaska into the Union with the initiative process as part of their constitutions. This seems to settle the issue at the federal level. At the state level, when courts have reached the issue they have almost uniformly decided that l&R is consistent with republican government. Some courts, in fact, have held that l&R is a fundamental part of republican government.
|
|