Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin proposed this morning on his popular legal blog that OWS should resurrect the Guarantee Clause to "offer a still deeper vision of the Constitution than simply a rejection of Citizens United."
The Guarantee Clause of the Constitution, found in Article IV, states that "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union, a Republican Form of Government." The clause, Balkin argues, "was designed to ensure that a small group of powerful and wealthy individuals could not hijack the government and make it do their bidding to the exclusion of the vast majority of the public."
The clause has been unenforceable in the courts ever since the mid-19th century, when the Supreme Court handed down a decision that left it to the political branches to decide for themselves whether they were, in fact, representative of the people they are supposed to serve. Luckily for OWS, that decision was penned by Chief Justice Roger Taney, whose legally and morally bankrupt Dred Scott decision has forever cast doubt on the legitimacy of his legal judgment.
If the Tea Party can take its vision of the constitution, abandoned long ago by the mainstream, from "off the wall" to "on the wall," writes Balkin, so should OWS ground its protests in the constitutional text that guarantees "a government that cares about the 99 percent, not a government that is of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent and for the 1 percent."
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