The Green Bag
80
such combination would destroy rea sonably competitive conditions in inter state commerce. . . .
“A decision following the supposed authority of the Sugar Trust case and
manufacturers and sellers of an article of interstate commerce surely would not be accepted by the people of the United States as a final solution of the trust problem. Such a decision would prob
holding that the Anti-Trust Act does
ably result in an imperative popular de
not prevent the effective monopolization of interstate trade or commerce by com
mand for legislation of a socialistic character and possibly it might lead
bining or vesting in a corporation the
to an tion."
plants and businesses of practically all
amendment
of
the Constitu
What Is a “Republican Form of Government”? THE opponents of the popular initia tive and referendum are fond of asserting that those measures are incon
sistent with the clause of the federal Constitution guaranteeing a "republican form of government” to citizens of the United States.
The meaning of the
phrase “a republican form of govern ment” will doubtless be settled, ulti
mately, in accordance with the political convictions of the American people, whether they come to favor the con servative form of representative govern
ment or to substitute for it the newer direct form of popular control. We have doubts whether the Supreme Court will ever construe the phrase in its nar rower signification. One of the "Notes” in the Harvard Law Review recently threw much light on this interesting question.‘ To quote:— “The Latin res publica, at least as late as the sixteenth century, was altogether colorless as to the form of government
it designated.
The compound adjective
is not found in classical ‘or mediaeval
Latin. The noun ‘republic’ and the adjective ‘republican’ were used by Wil son, the author of the clause in its final form, and by other publicists of the time 124 Harvard Law Review, 141 (Dec.).
in a sense broad enough to include direct
democracy. The same thing is true of the use of the corresponding French words re'publigue and re'publicain by Montesquieu and apparently by Rous
seau, the writings of both of whom had a great influence on American political thought of that period. The political party which advocated keeping the gov ernment as close to the people as possible was called, shortly after the formation
of the Constitution, the Republican party. On the other hand, Madison defines a republic as ‘a government in which the scheme of representation takes
place,’ and contrasts it with a pure democracy.
Discussion of the clause
under consideration in the constitutional convention indicates that it was directed against insurrection, invasion and monar chical forms. "The state governments in existence in 1787 must be taken as examples of the republican form, in the sense in which that phrase is used in the Con stitution. In spite of the fact that the referendum appears in the formation of some of the state constitutions and in spite of the existence of the New Eng land town government, so close a student of political science as Hamilton believed that the state governments were then
