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The Supreme Court And The People, Everett Mckinley Dirksen

Michigan Law Review

There is only one circumstance, as I read the Constitution, which authorizes the federal government to intrude or interfere with the governmental structure of a state. That would occur under the provisions of section 4 of article IV, which, in pertinent part, state: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government .... " This was the question, if indeed there was a federal question, to be determined in the earlier Baker v. Carr and the reapportionment cases. To rely on the fourteenth amendment for authority to establish by judicial decree a new …