and today, I'm learning about Article IV

of the U.S. Constitution.

Article IV lays out the nuts and bolts

of how Federalism, the system of shared governance

between states and the federal

government works in practice.

Article IV has four sections.

The first two, the Full Faith and Credit clause

and the Privileges and Immunities clause

talk about how states will treat each other's citizens

as well as they treat the citizens of their own states.

Then the third section is an Admissions clause

discussing how new states will be added to the Union

and the fourth section is the Guarantee clause,

which guarantees every state in the Union

a Republican form of government.

To learn more about Article IV

I sought out the help of two experts.

Erin Hawley is an Associate Professor of Law

at the University of Missouri.

Her scholarship focuses on the federal courts,

and she teaches Constitutional Litigation,

Tax Policy, and Agricultural Law.

Professor Gabriel Chin is the Director

of Clinical Legal Education at the UC Davis School of Law.

He's a teacher and scholar of Immigration Law,

criminal procedure, and race and law.

Professor Hawley, can you take us a little bit through

why the framers included Article IV?

What was its purpose?

- [Professor Hawley] The founders of the Constitution

were very concerned that the federal government

be one of limited powers

and, because of that, they saw the states

as having an active and critical role in placing

a check on the federal government.

So, we've got the three branches

and their own checks and balances

and then we've got the federal government

and the state government also playing a role in

checking and balancing each other.

They wanted to establish a

strong central government, but also to

ensure that it didn't have too much power,

and the states were critical to this effort.

Also, they very much wanted the states

to act collectively, not individually.

As you'll recall, the states had not been doing so well

under the loose Articles of the Confederation.

They'd sort of been going it alone

on critical issues like trade and defense

to the detriment of the Union.

So, Article IV is also

a, sort of, key to making sure that the states act,

sort of, as a unified whole,

rather than going it alone.

- [Professor Chin] It's one country made up

of diverse states, and

if you prefer the way

things are done in Nevada,

you can move there.

And if you think that some other state has a better set

of answers to the problems of modern life, you can move.

What the Full Faith and Credit clause and the

Privileges and Immunities clause are designed to do

is to facilitate transactions, to facilitate moving,

to facilitate communications and commerce

and trade and travel, among the states.

But that doesn't mean that what's going on

in each of the states can't be very, very different.

- [Kim] We often think of checks and balances

as being something that was designed

to be kind of horizontal.

That the Legislature and the Executive branch

and the Judicial branch,

just kind of all at the same level checking each other.

But there's also kind of this

vertical checks and balances happening, too,

between the power of the federal government,

the power of the states,

and the power of the local governments.

- [Professor Hawley] Absolutely; we've got the, the,

three branches and their checks and balances.

But we also have a strong central government

that's checked in large part by

strong, independent, sovereign governments

in each of the 50 states and these states

traditionally have what are known as Police Powers,

so they have a lot of inherent authority to govern

the people in those states, subject to federal law.

But it really does sort of place a check on

federal authority, and I think this is precisely

what the framers wanted because they did want

a strong government, but they also were very much

of the view that states were important,

that their own states were important

and they didn't want to lose that in the new,

new Constitution and new federal government.

- [Kim] There are four sections

in Article IV, and the first section

deals with Full Faith and Credit.

And it says Full Faith and Credit shall be given

in each State to the public Acts,

Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.

What does Full Faith and Credit actually mean?

- [Professor Chin] It's designed to make,

in a certain sense all of the states

of the United States part of a single system.

And, so, Full Faith and Credit means that

a court judgment, for example, in one state,

will be recognized in every state.

- [Professor Hawley] If you have a valid judgment in

New York, for example, and you move to California,

the California courts are required to give effect

to that judgment, to that state court judgment,

so long as it was validly issued.

There was a federal statute known as the

Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA,

that was passed under President Clinton,

and recently the Supreme Court

struck that down as unconstitutional.

So now under Full Faith and Credit if you're married in one

state, you're married in another state as well.

- [Professor Chin] You can see the kinds of problems

that would exist if states

didn't honor the legal decisions

that were made by other states

such as, who's married or who's divorced?

Or who owns a particular piece of property?

Or whether a particular child

is going to be in the custody of one

parent rather than another?

And the Full Faith and Credit clause is designed to say

in order for our system

to work, as a unified whole,

while it's true that the courts of Georgia are

distinct from the Courts of New York, et cetera,

they're separate systems, but they have

to treat the work that each other does with respect.

- [Kim] If we move on to section two,

this says that the Citizens of each State

shall be entitled to all

Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

What are these Privileges and Immunities?

- [Professor Hawley] The Privileges and Immunities clause

has been one that's subject to

a number of, sort of, debate,

in the courts and the academic literature.

But, basically, Privileges and Immunities have been

construed to be those sorts of things

that would go with citizenship.

So, the right to travel, for example,

is a Privilege and Immunity.

Those sorts of things.

- [Professor Chin] Occasionally in American history,

there have been moments where states

didn't wanna let citizens of other states come through,

so during the Depression

there was an effort by some states to

limit the migration of people from out of state to in state.

And the Supreme Court said that's not permissible.

It also protects the right to travel.

In 1999, the Supreme Court dealt with a case called

Saenz vs. Roe, and what that case was about is that

California had relatively generous

welfare benefits and California wanted to

set up its law

in such a way that it wouldn't encourage people

from other states to move to California

just to get the welfare benefits.

And, so, what they did is, they said,

that if you don't live in California,

if you're moving from out of state

and you apply for welfare benefits,

then we're gonna give you the welfare

benefits that you would have gotten

in your state for the first year.

We're not gonna give you the higher California benefits,

we're gonna give you whatever you would've gotten

where you came from.

That's unconstitutional and the Supreme Court said

that violates the Privileges and Immunities clause.

We're one county, one nation.

People are allowed to cross the borders whenever they want.

- [Kim] Interesting, but there's this second part of it

that says: 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 Service or Labour.

What is that all about?

- [Professor Hawley] That is one of the most unfortunate,

probably the most unfortunate clauses in our Constitution

and it's known as the Fugitive Slave clause

and that title is pretty descriptive.

If you have a slave, who is validly owned,

as it were in those days, under one states law and that

person escaped to a free state,

this clause gave the owner the right to

reclaim that slave and put them back

into, sort of, ownership in their own state.

- [Professor Chin] It is a sneaky way

of talking about slavery and

this compromise with slavery was necessary

to create the United States.

Slavery, the word, isn't used in the Constitution.

They only use these euphemisms,

these, sort of, complicated circumlocutions,

and there's an argument that there's a reason for that.

And the reason for that is

that a lot of the framers of the Constitution

didn't support slavery, opposed slavery.

They did think that it was important to have

a United States and to have a Constitution,

so they wanted to,

to do what was necessary to achieve that.

But they did the absolute minimum and they did it

in such a way

that, consciously, doesn't recognize

and legitimize the institution of slavery.

- [Kim] All right, so, then we get into

New States and Territories.

I think it was very forward-looking

of the framers to recognize that

new states wanna join the Union,

and then to provide a process for that.

Can you tell us a little bit about

what that process was like?

- [Professor Hawley] Article IV, Section Three, Clause One

provides the process for admitting new states.

Again, it recognizes that new states might

want to join the Union,

and it gives a wide latitude to Congress

for admitting new states.

Basically the process was that

a territory would indicate to the Congress

that it wished to become a state.

Then they would submit a constitution

and Congress would approve the new state.

But the Constitution, itself, in Article IV, places

some limitationa on that.

Some of the Eastern states were concerned

that the large Western territories

might become too influential.

They had a couple of provisions that no new state

could be created out of an old state,

nor could parts of states be combined

to form a new state unless there was consent

from all of the involved states.

- [Professor Chin] And it's not so clear that, that

purchase of territory from foreign governments

was a power that was granted in the Constitution to anyone.