Full Faith And Credit Clause Analysis

Kristen Irvine

9/22/15

AP Government

Ms. Suski

Federalism

The relationship between the states as outlined by sections one, two, and four of Article four in the Constitution examines how states should interact between each other. The first section of this amendment is the Full Faith and Credit Clause which says that judicial decrees and contracts made in one state will be binding and enforceable in any other state. The second section of Article four states that citizens of one state shall be entitled to the same privileges and immunities in another state. The fourth section of the fourth Article states that the federal government will ensure a republican form of government in all states. These four sections of the Fourth Amendment are all

Any court ruling given in North Carolina must be recognized in other states. This is an example of the use of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. It helps to organize states into one union under a federal government. An issue that dealt with the Full Faith and Credit Clause before was civil unions or same- sex marriages, before the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges in the summer of 2015 some civil unions between same- sex couples were not recognized in other states. The DOMA or the Defense of Marriage Act, legally recognized marriage as between a man and a women and allowed states to deny recognition of same sex unions that were provided in another state. Although marriage and civil unions should be recognized under the Full Faith and Credit Clause it was not because this clause was primarily used for judicial rulings and was not thought to apply to marriages or civil union licenses. This deals with the recognition of same sex marriages in states, it also deals with the relationship between states. At the time some states such as New York recognized same-sex civil marriages but whether these unions were recognized in other states was an entirely different story. This went on for a while until it was determined that DOMA was not only discriminatory but also went against the Full Faith and Credit

Although these are the duties of the national government to the state government this relationship is not always entirely clear, of current that national government has a lot more power and authority of the states government. Also it can be interpreted that the national government is supposed to deal with issues on a grander scale while the state governments are supposed to deal with more local issues. Another reason why the obligations the national government has to the states is not always clear is because it says that the national government should protect states from internal discourse which is extremely vague as to what internal discourse or “domestic violence”, whether this means violence within the state or violence between states it is unclear, and could be interpreted multiple ways in order for the national government to gain more power. A way to make this clearer would be for a change in Article 4, Section 4 that states what “domestic violence” is so that there is a formal definition regarding states as to what the duty of the national government is regarding internal discourse. Although this Section defines the relationship that the