This is a little far-fetched but I wondered if it could happen. Could the citizens of a state decide that they are fed up with their current government and know just the person that could fix things for good and establish that person as an old-style monarch of that state? All of the state decisons would be handled by that person. Also, the monarch would single-handedly decide who to give all of the state’s electoral votes in presidential elections. All decisions that would normally be voted on by voters or the state legislature would also be handled by the monarch even if it came to ratifying a constitutional amendment etc. Would all of this be legal under the current system?
No.
The Constitution does not place many requirements on the structure of state government, though it does require that it be of a “republican form.” In particular,
(Article IV section 4.)
This would seem to indicate that the federal government would not tolerate a monarchy.
No.
Article IV, Section 4, U.S. Constitution: “The United States shall guarantee to evry State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”
There were pre-Civil War court cases relative to this with reference to Rhode Island, which preserved its pre-Revolutionary state constitution with an extremely limited franchise well into the 1800s.
You know, there’s no point in replying to a GQ thread if you’re not going to bother with a useful answer. All you had to do was google up the relavant clause in the Constitution to provide context for your answer. Would have saved me the trouble.
Just to play Devil’s Advocate, can’t you have a republican monarchy? Or am I thinking of a constitutional monarchy?
Slight hi-jack here - just how much leeway do the states have in determining what form of government they use? Could they, for example, set the term for Governor for 20 years? For life?
I see nothing in the Constitution that would prevent either of these two choices, perhaps depending on what additional governmental structures the state also created. A 20-year term would probably pass federal muster as long as there was a legislature and the people of the state were given the opportunity to vote on the governor and the legislature. Governor for life would be more problematic but if there were a recall provision it’s certainly possible.
None of this has been tested in court AFAIK. Has any case challenging a state government as being non-republican been brought ever?
Yes: Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. (7 How.) 1 (1849). [Warning: Link goes to a .pdf document. For a non-.pdf version, see here.]
But reading the Constitution did you good and would have done Shagnasty even better.
Let’s try that again: here.
Section 9, Clause 8:
*No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. *
Pretty much seems to rule out any sort of monarcy.
Not necessarily. As worded, that prohibits the federal government from awarding noble titles; it’s not clear that it prohibits individual states from doing so.
The clause seems to grant only the state the right to determine if the government is republican or not. If the people disagree, tough.
If the Dorr Rebellion is any example, the governments both federal and state will always side with authority rather than with the people. For a country that glorifies that it was founded by a rebellion against “tyranny”, it sure backtracked doubletime on the subject of armed populism.
A postscript:
AFAIK the only other time the “Republican Form of Government” clause was invoked was during and after the Civil War, when the Union government took the position that it empowered the federal government to ensure that the state governments were loyal to the Union.
Actually, I think The answer is actually Yes. Google Mashantucket Pequot Reservation to see that they are an established indian nation, and actual sovereign nation to boot. Though not a monarchy, they are their own sovereign nation, located in CT.
Indian nations are not states of the Union. The are “domestic dependent nations.” They have some degree of “sovereignty” but they have no constitutional status as such. A hereditary Indian chief is not legally a “public official” in the same way that, say, an elected sheriff is a public official. There are tribal courts, police and other authorities on reservations with some independent authority and jurisdiction, but I believe (no cite) that these are essentially separate organizations from the traditional tribal or national organizations. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty.
I think a republican monarchy would be a contradiction in terms. A republican government formally derives its sovereignty from the people; a monarch is personally sovereign.
Countries such as the U.K., Canada, Australia, etc., are constitutional monarchies, where the queen has inherent sovereign powers by virtue of her birth, but the constitution places such strict limits on her exercise of those powers that the countries look and behave very much like liberal democratic republics. In form, however, they are still monarchies, not republics.
Generally, the Fourteen amendment has been interpreted to require that states also abide by the provisions of the Bill of Rights; I think it likely that the same reasoning applies to clauses of the Constitution itself.
Article I, Section 10: “No state shall . . . grant any Title of Nobility.”
That’s beyond doubtful-it’s just wrong. A significant portion of the body of the Constitution serves to limit the powers of the federal government in order to reserve those powers to the individual states … Article I of Amendment XIV is worded very broadly, but not broadly enough to support that.
OK, well, that was just too easy. So much for this thread. 
(And to save everyone else the trouble-no, Freddy didn’t cut out any important qualifiers in the ellipsis, just a list of other things the states can’t do.)
Not necessarily. Many modern constitutional monarchies, including Belgium, Sweden and Spain, have constitutions specifying that the monarchy derives its sovereignty from the people (or the nation). It therefore all depends on how you want to define ‘republican’.