checks were legislatures that deviated from perfect equality of representation. For example, one might add, Article V makes equal representation in the U.S. Senate of the unequally populous states of the union an unamendable principle. What prevents such practices from becoming contrary to republican government is their purpose. The Framers believed, writes Thomas, that a proper government promoted the common good. They conceived this good as objective and not inherently coextensive with majoritarian preferences. In order for government to promote the common good, it had to do more than simply obey the will of the majority. It also had to protect fundamental rights, says Thomas, citing the Declaration of Independence, Blackstones Commentaries, and Federalist 43. (The sentence from Blackstone reads: For the principal aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which are vested in them by the immutable laws of nature.) As for Federalist 43, we can read therein that American constitutionalism is based on recurrence to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and on natures God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed. In other words, to the Declaration a free society will always exhibit struggle. Therefore, as Thomas writes, designing a government to fulfill the conflicting tasks of respecting the fundamental equality of persons while promoting the common good requires making incommensurable tradeoffs. In this enterprise the people are the ultimate sovereign, and the Court needs to show its respect for them. Thus, Thomas concludes, In trying to impose its own theory of democracy, the Court is hopelessly adrift amid political theory and interest-group politics with no guiding legal principles. The wisdom of the people should prevail over the theorizing of the academic and legal elites. Justice Thomas reminder of the Republican Government Guarantee Clause comes at a propitious momentwhen the very idea of republican institutions has come under fire from scholarly, legal, and political forces, and the administrative state appears to enjoy bipartisan approval. The boldness of this opinion becomes even clearer when we realize that it breaks a long silence on the clause. The Courts last majority opinion mentioning it in any notable way was Luther v. Borden (1849). The author of that opinion, Chief Justice Roger Taney, dismissed its application as a political question. Wrote Taney: Under this article of the Constitution, it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State. For as the United States guarantee to each State a republican government, Congress must necessarily decide what government is established in the State before it can determine whether it is republican or not. By making legal positivismthe will of Congressthe test for what is republican, Taney, I speculate, wished to denigrate the republican principles of the Declaration and then separate them from the Constitution. An even sweeter victory for him would come about eight years later, following the Compromise of 1850, in Dred Scott (1857). There, the Chief