This clause contemplated the existence of a positive unqualified right on the part of the owner of a slave which no State law could in any way regulate, control or restrain. Consequently the owner of a slave had the same right to seize and repossess him in another State, as the local laws of his own State conferred upon him, and a State law which penalized such seizure was held unconstitutional.[216] Congress had the power and the duty, which it exercised by the act of February 12, 1793,[217] to carry into effect the rights given by this Section,[218] and the States had no concurrent power to legislate on the subject.[219] However, a State statute providing a penalty for harboring a fugitive slave was held not to conflict with this clause since it did not affect the right or remedy either of the master or the slave; by it the State simply prescribed a rule of conduct for its own citizens in the exercise of its police power.[220]
Section 3. New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
Doctrine of the Equality of the States
"Equality of constitutional right and power is the condition of all the States of the Union, old and new."[221] This doctrine, now a truism of Constitutional Law, did not find favor in the Constitutional Convention. That body struck out from this section, as reported by the Committee on Detail, two sections to the effect that "... new States shall be admitted on the same terms with the original States. But the Legislature may make conditions with the new States concerning the public debt which shall be subsisting."[222] Opposing this action, Madison insisted that "the Western States neither would nor ought to submit to a union which degraded them from an equal rank with the other States."[223] Nonetheless, after further expressions of opinion pro and con, the Convention voted nine States to two to delete the requirement of equality.[224] Prior to this time, however, Georgia and Virginia had ceded to the United States large territories held by them, upon condition that new States should be formed therefrom, and admitted to the Union on an equal footing with the original States.[225] With the admission of Louisiana in 1812, the principle of equality was extended to States created out of territory purchased from a foreign power.[226] By the Joint Resolution of December 29, 1845, Texas "was admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever."[227] Again and again, in adjudicating the rights and duties of States admitted after 1789, the Supreme Court has referred to the condition of equality as if it were an inherent attribute of the Federal Union.[228] Finally, in 1911, it invalidated a restriction on the change of location of the State capital, which Congress had imposed as a condition for the admission of Oklahoma, on the ground that Congress may not embrace in an enabling act conditions relating wholly to matters under State control.[229] In an opinion, from which Justices Holmes and McKenna dissented, Justice Lurton argued: "The power is to admit 'new States into this Union.' 'This Union' was and is a union of States, equal in power, dignity and authority, each competent to exert that residuum of sovereignty not delegated to the United States by the Constitution itself. To maintain otherwise would be to say that the Union, through the power of Congress to admit new States, might come to be a union of States unequal in power, as including States whose powers were restricted only by the Constitution, with others whose powers had been further restricted by an act of Congress accepted as a condition of admission."[230]
EARLIER SCOPE OF THE DOCTRINE
Until recently, however, the requirement of equality has applied primarily to political standing and sovereignty rather than to economic or property rights.[231] Broadly speaking, every new State is entitled to exercise all the powers of government which belong to the original States of the Union.[232] It acquires general jurisdiction, civil and criminal, for the preservation of public order, and the protection of persons and property throughout its limits except where it has ceded exclusive jurisdiction to the United States.[233] The legislative authority of a newly admitted State extends over federally owned land within the State, to the same extent as over similar property held by private owners, save that the State can enact no law which would conflict with the constitutional powers of the United States. Consequently it has jurisdiction to tax private activities carried on within the public domain, if the tax does not constitute an unconstitutional burden on the Federal Government.[234] Statutes applicable to territories, e.g., the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787, cease to have any operative force when the territory, or any part thereof, is admitted to the Union, except as adopted by State law.[235] When the enabling act contains no exclusion of jurisdiction as to crimes committed on Indian reservations by persons other than Indians, State courts are vested with jurisdiction.[236] But the constitutional authority of Congress to regulate commerce with Indian tribes is not inconsistent with the equality of new States,[237] and conditions inserted in the New Mexico Enabling Act forbidding the introduction of liquor into Indian territory were therefore valid.[238]
Admission of a State on an equal footing with the original States involves the adoption as citizens of the United States of those whom Congress makes members of the political community, and who are recognized as such in the formation of the new State.[239]
JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS