So this is how liberty dies— with thunderous applause!” Stated in response to Palpatine’s rise from Chancellor to Emperor, these words capture one of the most important themes in Star Wars. The franchise highlights just how easily freedom and democracy can diminish in the face of fear and crisis. There’s no clearer reminder that the price of liberty is constant vigilance.
The most visible democratic backsliding in Star Wars is the fall of the Galactic Republic itself and its replacement with the Galactic Empire. But beneath this surface is a subtler but more sinister democratic deficit: that of the local governments on individual planets. The Galactic Republic appears to have no Guarantee Clause, and does nothing to ensure republican governance on its constituent worlds. This failure sets the stage for democratic decline in that universe while providing a stern warning for our own.
Guarantee Clause Guide
The Guarantee (or Guaranty, depending on whom you ask) Clause is found in Art. IV § 4 of the US Constitution. It states that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The Clause enshrines a federal interest in the structure of state government and limits how states may conduct their internal affairs.
In theory, federal courts could read the Guarantee Clause as a license to strike down state policies that they deem insufficiently republican. But in practice, the courts have refused to assert this power. Beginning with the 1849 case Luther v. Borden, the Supreme Court has treated Guarantee Clause claims as non-justiciable. Luther, 48 U.S. 1 (1849). Where federal courts have struck down states’ election systems, they have generally relied on other provisions of the Constitution, most notably the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. See, e.g., Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960); Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962).
As with many constitutional provisions, however, just because the federal courts have not used it does not mean the Guarantee Clause has no significance. Congress has frequently intervened in state election systems, notably by passing statutes like the Voting Rights Act and approving constitutional provisions like the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-Fourth Amendments. Thus, the United States has at least partially fulfilled its duty to guarantee republican state governments, even if it has not done so through the courts.
Sovereignty in Star Wars
However significant the Guarantee Clause is in our republic, there appears to be no equivalent in the Galactic Republic. Between the Prequels and the Clone Wars, we see myriad planets under Republic suzerainty, and the vast majority of them seem anything but republican. Most planets appear to be monarchies, including Naboo, Dac, Mandalore, and Onderon. Some of these are elective monarchies, but we are not told who may vote for the monarch. If the vote were restricted to the nobility, as many real-world elective monarchies are, that would hardly be a republican form of government. Worse yet, the few planets that are not monarchies, like Scipio and Cato Neimoidia, are governed by corporations.
The lack of any meaningful local democracy helps explain why the Galactic Republic was so vulnerable to Palpatine’s machinations. The Prequels and Clone Wars show us how dysfunctional and oppressive planetary governments are: from the rampant corruption on Mandalore to Naboo’s de facto apartheid system to the outright slavery on Tattooine and Zygerria, myriad local rulers blatantly violated the rights of their subjects.
With this background, it’s unsurprising why most Senators would respond to Palpatine’s megalomaniacal speech with “thunderous applause.” Why should they object to autocracy on Coruscant when that’s exactly what they thrived under on their home planets? Nor should rank- and-file citizens be any more concerned about the Republic’s downfall, given how little it protected their rights. In the immortal words of Mr. Plinkett, “if you were an average Joe, the rise and fall of the Empire might not have even affected your life in the least bit!”
The Shape of Things to Come?
The United States has often fallen short of its obligation to ensure republican state governance, most notably during the Jim Crow era, when both Congress and the Supreme Court flatly refused to take action against widespread racist disenfranchisement. See, e.g., Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903) (finding the most sophomoric technicality to justify not overturning Alabama’s racist election laws). Today, we’re witnessing a new wave of state disenfranchisement and federal enablement.
Since 2010, state governments have enacted a slew of laws weakening their republican foundations, both by making it harder to vote and by gerrymandering voters out of any practical legislative power. The federal government initially countered this democratic backsliding through the Preclearance regime, a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required DoJ approval for changes in many states’ voting laws. But in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court made this provision unenforceable. Shelby County, 133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013). Combined with the rise of the openly authoritarian Trump Administration, this trend has made a dead letter of the Guarantee Clause.
Some in the federal government have pushed back against this trend. Notably, House Democrats have passed a number of bills to strengthen republican principles at all levels of government, including the For the People Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. But these bills died in the Senate, and given the persistence of the filibuster, that doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.
Star Wars offers us a warning ahead of these dark democratic times. Even ifthere is no Dark Lord of the Sith (&I wouldn’t be too confident about that with Mitch McConnell’s around), our democracy is at serious risk from bottom-up decay. Unless Congress or the courts get serious about the Guarantee Clause, it won’t be long before liberty dies-perhaps not with thunderous applause, but instead so quietly that many of us won’t notice.
