The Property Clause grants Congress the power to make laws for the territories and other federal lands.
And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.The first section requires states to extend "full faith and credit" to the public acts, records, and court proceedings of other states.
In Corfield, the circuit court sustained a New Jersey law giving state residents the exclusive right to gather clams and oysters.
That phrase incorporates all acts prohibited by the laws of a state, including misdemeanors and small, or petty, offenses.
The Dennison decision was overruled by Puerto Rico v. Branstad (1987); now, the federal courts may require the extradition of fugitives.
However, the accused may prevent extradition by offering clear evidence that he was not in the state he allegedly fled from at the time of the crime.
[4] When first adopted, this clause applied to fugitive slaves and required that they be extradited upon the claims of their masters, but it provided no means for doing so.
As free states sought to undermine the federal law, the even more severe Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was enacted.
Thus the Congress, utilizing the discretion allowed by the framers, adopted a policy of equal status for all newly admitted states.
Congressional restrictions on the equality of states, even when those limitations have been found in the acts of admission, have been held void by the Supreme Court.
[14] These holdings include national parks, national forests, recreation areas, wildlife refuges, vast tracts of range and public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, reservations held in trust for Native American tribes, military bases, and ordinary federal buildings and installations.
[15] Pursuant to a parallel clause in Article One, Section Eight, the Supreme Court has held that states may not tax such federal property.
In another case, Kleppe v. New Mexico, the Court ruled that the federal Wild Horse and Burro Act was a constitutional exercise of congressional power under the Property Clause – at least insofar as it was applied to a finding of trespass.
The case prohibited the entering upon the public lands of the United States and removing wild burros under the New Mexico Estray Law.
[16] A major issue early in the 20th century was whether the whole Constitution applied to the territories called insular areas by Congress.
These rulings have helped shape public opinion among Puerto Ricans during the ongoing debate over the commonwealth's political status.
The Guarantee Clause mandates that all U.S. states must be grounded in republican principles such as the consent of the governed.
A republican form of government is distinguished from a direct democracy, which the Founding Fathers had no intentions of entering.
10, "Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
A political crisis in 1840s Rhode Island, the Dorr Rebellion, forced the Supreme Court to rule on the meaning of this clause.
In Luther v. Borden,[19] the Court held that the determination of whether a state government is a legitimate republican form as guaranteed by the Constitution is a political question to be resolved by the Congress.
The Luther v. Borden ruling left the responsibility to establish guidelines for the republican nature of state governments in the hands of the Congress.
[20] In Pacific States, a utility company challenged an Oregon tax law passed by a referendum, as opposed to the ordinary legislative process.
[21] The doctrine was later limited in Baker v. Carr (1962), which held that the lack of state legislative redistricting to be justiciable.
[21] While the Supreme Court's holding in Luther v. Borden still holds today, the Court, by looking to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (adopted 19 years after Luther v. Borden was decided), has developed new criteria for determining which questions are political in nature and which are justiciable.