
States and Territories, Part 1: Horizontal Federalism and Article IV
Yale professor Akhil Reed Amar continues his course on America's Written Constitution by turning to Article IV and the relationships among states themselves, not states against the federal government. He starts with Benjamin Franklin's 1754 cartoon 'Join or Die' and the Albany Plan, showing how the colonies were tied to the crown individually with little connecting them to each other, much like Kenya, India, and Canada under a shared monarch in 1930. He traces how the Articles of Confederation let states turn away 'paupers and vagabonds' at their borders, a power the Constitution's privileges and immunities clause removed. The lecture closes on citizenship: Amar argues Article IV contains no race test, notes South Carolina's failed push to insert the word 'white,' and points to free Black men voting on the Constitution in Massachusetts and New York, against Roger Taney's later ruling in Dred Scott.