Analysis Of Article IV Of The United States Constitution

Article IV of the United States Constitution is the first article discussing the states. Section I of this article gives the Full Faith and Credit Clause where states must recognize judgments issued in all other states in the union. Section II lays out the privileges and immunities of the states. Section III gives the rules for accepting new states into the union. Section IV makes it clear that the Federal Government is to protect the states from foreign invasion. The fourth Article of the Constitution discusses the duties of the states and the responsibilities of the government to those states. Section I of the fourth Article, gives us the Full Faith and Credit Clause that we still use today. When the Constitution was drafted all of the states still considered themselves as independent nations, the problem would arise from court decisions made in one state and whether the other states would uphold those decisions. To ensure this would happen the founders gave us the Full Faith and Credit Clause that says any judgment issued in one state is valid and enforceable in all the other states. Essentially if the court made a ruling for money damages the person the money is owed to can take that judgment across state lines and have the new state enforce the judgment no questions asked. Section I was designed to

The states entered into a union for the purpose of having protection from foreign invasions and Section IV of Article IV made sure that the government knew that was their department. The only part of Article IV that I found surprising was in Section III with the addition of the new states, I did not know that Congress had the power to accept new states and that was interesting to me. I found that Article IV was a general overview of the states where the founders were trying not to limit the actions of the states but still ensure peace among