Full faith and credit to Vermont In 1777 the politicians of Vermont published a litany of grievances against the government of New York and declared that thenceforward they considered Vermont a separate state pledging no allegiance to New York. Then they existed as an unrecognized state for 14 years before being admitted to the Union as the 14th state, first under their constitution of 1777 and then under their revised constitution of 1786. In 1777 they quickly asked the Continental Congress to be accorded representation in Congress, and being turned down largely because of objections from New York (repeatedly during 1777 through 1785) they took the position that Vermont was not a part of the USA (and in fact engaged in separate peace negotiations with the British, in which they said they would submit to being a British colony if the British would protect them from New York; those negotiations led to some prisoner-of-war exchanges). (Recall that no one ever defined the boundaries of the USA until the preliminary articles of peace were signed in November 1782, and they included Vermont within the boundaries. They had to do that because New York claimed Vermont was a part of New York.) When Vermont was admitted to the Union in March 1791 (after the legislature of New York decided in 1790 to give up that state's claims on condition that Congress decided to admit Vermont) no new state constitution took effect and no new governor assumed office, nor new justices of the state's highest court, etc. The state government simply continued. Governor Thomas Chittenden, sworn in in October 1790, continued his term of office. (Chittenden was actually re-elected annually from 1778 to 1788, but then Moses Robinson served a one-year term as governor from October 1789 to October 1790, then Chittenden was again re-elected repeatedly until he died in 1797.) The act of Congress admitting Vermont to the Union did not say anything about creation of a new state or a new state government, but rather said "The State of Vermont" had "petitioned the Congress" for admission. So it appears that under Vermont law, no new state was created but an already existing state got admitted to the Union, and federal law said nothing to the contrary. (Congress passed several bills pertaining to Vermont in February and March 1791. One of them admitted the state to the Union; one created a federal court in Vermont; one established a port of entry and customs house or something like that, where people entered the state from Canada; one fixed the number of representatives Vermont would have in Congress; and one provided that the U.S. census, conducted elsewhere during the previous year, should be extended into Vermont.) So does the full-faith-and-credit clause of the U.S. Constitution require every state to grant full faith and credit to to official acts of the State of Vermont during its years as an unrecognized state? Is there a sort of tacit retroactive recognition? (Vermont's constitution got revised again in 1793, and I suspect one reason for that was that it was no longer appropriate to have a list of grievances against New York in the state constitution.)
In my opinion, from the moment Vermont became a state, as decided by Congress, every state has to give full faith and credit to its records, acts, and judicial proceedings. Congress in 1790 acted under the authority of the full faith and credit clause and passed a law that eventually became what is known today as 28 U.S. Code § 1738. That law was mostly unchanged through the years, aside from an amendment in 1948. That law provided for each state to recognize each other's acts, records, and judicial procedures under the appropriate seal. In 1813 the Supreme Court decided Mills v. Duryee. In this case the Supreme Court decided that the authority for states providing full faith and credit came under this law. This law does not list any dates of effectiveness nor does it restrict its effectiveness to when Vermont entered the union. Thus in my opinion at the moment Vermont entered the union full faith and credit should have been given to all its acts, records, and proceedings. As I cannot find any case law in the affirmative nor in the negative I interpreted it myself above. Later the Supreme Court recognized a public policy exemption from the full faith and credit clause, likely anything that falls under that exception need not be recognized.
Dale M's answer is not supported at all by history, or any mode of constitutional interpretation. I also don't find it likely. I'd say that if a duly ratified amendment said as much, that would be the law. It is certainly correct that the court could try to narrow the meaning. It's also possible to simply not follow the Constitution (as we do with state immunity and the 11th amendment). But to assume that would be done here is just speculating blindly. Of course, this question doesn't warrant much more attention than blind speculation, so my comment is not a very offensive accusation. As a few counter points, we have radically change the form of our government many times within the current constitution. Reconstruction, The New Deal and so on, all represented huge changes. Most importantly, the 17th amendment can easily be viewed as more radical than the question's proposed amendment. It completely flipped the political system upside down, orienting power in the people and the federal government, and treating the states as some weird intermediary: but we now see it as a relatively boring enactment. Certainly we could come to see the formal abolishment of the amendment process similarly, especially if it were (which it would need to be) accompanied with a new found comfort with non-textual interpretation to effectively &quot;amend&quot; through interpretation, i.e. If the textualists lost badly this amendment would seem like a relatively natural way of announcing their demise. Remember that Scalia's whole point, is that strict originalism (not saying he was actually so strict himself) would democratize by forcing change through the amendment process. If we rejected that notion (as deceptive, for example) we could (as in its not completely ridiculous to imagine) announce that rejection with the proposed amendment.
Prior to the 14th and 15th amendments, the US Federal Constitution and the Federal laws passed under it neither allowed nor denied anyone the right to vote. The decisions on who would and would not be allowed to vote, including for members of Congress and for President, was wholly in the hands of the sates, and were regulated by the various state constitutions and laws. A few states permitted women to vote, and at least one permitted free blacks to vote, at least for a period of its history. The Federal government had nothing to say on the matter. In at lesat one case the US Supreme Court refused to consider such a question. That was the case of Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. (7 How.) 1 (1849) which grew out of the Dorr Rebellion The state of Rhode Island, had retained its pre-revolutionary charter (dating from 1663) as its constitution, and required the ownership of a significant amount of landed property as a qualification to vote. The Wikipedia article on the rebellion (linked above) states: By 1829, 60% of the state's free white men were ineligible to vote (women and most non-white men were prohibited from voting). In 1841 a group led by Thomas Wilson Dorr held a convention to draft a new state Constitution, (known as the &quot;People's Constitution&quot;), and held ratifying votes on the draft. They declared that it had been approved by a majority of those qualified under the old laws as well as a majority of those voting and qualified under the new rules, and that it was therefore the valid constitution of the state. The old (charter) government said this was invalid and illegal. Attempts to establish the new government by force failed. However, a revised state constitution that greatly expanded voting rights was passed and took effect in 1843. Luther v. Borden was a case of trespass against members of the militia acting under the charter government, brought by a supporter of Dorr. The plaintiffs brought extensive evidence (over 150 pages) intended to establish that the Dorr or &quot;People's&quot; constitution had been validly ratified by a majority of voters, and that the old constitution had improperly restricted voting rights. The case went to the US Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Taney wrote in the majority opinion: The plaintiff contends that the charter government was displaced, and ceased to have any lawful power, after the organization, in May, 1842, of the government which he supported, and although that government never was able to exercise any authority in the State nor to command obedience to its laws or to its officers, yet he insists that it was the lawful and established government upon the ground that it was ratified by a large majority of the male people of the State of the age of twenty-one and upwards, and also by a majority of those who were entitled to vote for general officers under the then existing laws of the State. ... The point, then, raised here has been already decided by the courts of Rhode Island. The question relates altogether to the constitution and laws of that State, and the well settled rule in this court is that the courts of the United States adopt and follow the decisions of the State courts in questions which concern merely the constitution and laws of the State. Besides, if the Circuit Court had entered upon this inquiry, by what rule could it have determined the qualification of voters upon the adoption or rejection of the proposed constitution unless there was some previous law of the State to guide it? It is the province of a court to expound the law, not to make it. And certainly it is no part of the judicial functions of any court of the United States to prescribe the qualification of voters in a State, giving the right to those to whom it is denied by the written and established constitution and laws of the State, or taking it away from those to whom it is given; nor has it the right to determine what political privileges the citizens of a State are entitled to, unless there is an established constitution or law to govern its decision. {emphasis added} Thus, until the passage and ratification of the 14th and 15th amendments, which forbid states to deny the vote based on race, national origin, and a few other grounds, the Federal Constitution had nothing to say on the point. States were required to grant the right to vote to women by the 19th amendment in 1920, and the 26th (1971) prohibited denial on the ground of age to anyone 18 or older. The 24th (1964) prohibited denial for failure to pay a poll tax or any other tax. The 14th amendment has been held to guarantee the equal weight of votes, in what was at first known as the &quot;one man, one vote&quot; rule (later &quot;one person, one vote&quot;) and has been used to overturn individual and group denials of voting rights. But there were no federal voting rights in the years before 1865. I am not aware of any writings by any of the &quot;founding fathers&quot; (say the members of the Constitutional Convention) that seriously discuss the possibility of a female President. But they did consider and endorse the possibility of a person being elected president who might not be qualified to vote in some of the states. They declined to impose, or permit Congress to impose, a property, or other variable, qualification on the president, even though many of the original states had property qualifications for voters. Options for this were proposed and voted down in the Convention's drafting process.
Art. 1 Sec. 9(8) says two different things. The first says that "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States". That means that the US cannot grant a title (hereditary or otherwise) like "Duke of Detroit", "Prince of Princeton". It does not prohibit the practice of speaking of POTUS as "His Highness, the President of the United States", likewise "His Elective Majesty" or "His Excellency", but early discussions in the Senate put paid to even calling a president this, and instead he is just called "Mr. President" (just as judges are called "your honor"). An appellation such as "Chief Justice" is not a title of nobility, it is a job description. We don't have titles of nobility granted by the government. There is a constitutional amendment, the Titles of Nobility Amendment, which was considered but not ratified, which is stricter on the anti-nobility statce. Then there is second thing, that prohibits officials from "accept[ing] of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state", without Congressional approval. Accordingly, the president, sec'y of state or a congressman cannot accept a gift, such as a car, from a foreign power, unless it is approved by Congress. Every congressional "exception" was approved by Congress; moreover, such benefits are not from a foreign power. The Speech or Debate Clause Art. I, Sec.6(1) in fact gives congressmen a privilege (immunity from arrest) which ordinary citizens do not have. So there is no connection between titles of nobility and free bean soup or whatever legal exemptions Congress may give itself.
First of all, there is a distinction between being impeached and being convicted. Trump was impeached when the House voted to adopt an Article of Impeachment. That happened while he was still in office. He will not be convicted until the Senate votes to convict him by a 2/3rds vote, if it ever does. In the case of Nixon, the House had not yet voted to adopt Articles of Impeachment when he resigned. They had been introduced and debated, but not yet finally approved. Moreover, we don't know what would have happened if the House had proceeded to pass such articles after Nixon had resigned. The House of that time did not choose to proceed. There was no court ruling saying that they could not do so. There are some precedents saying that the Senate can proceed with a trial after an official resigns or is expelled after impeachment. None of these are at all recent, none are clear cut, none involved an official whose term had ended, none involved a President, and none that I am aware of led to a conviction. And this issue has never been tested in a Federal court. Specifically, there is the case of William Belknap. Belknap was Secretary of War under US President Grant. He was accused of improperly profiting from military contracts. The House started impeachment proceedings. Grant interviewed Belknap, who confessed to Grant and resigned on the spot. The house none the less pass five articles of impeachment after Belknap resigned. When the Senate took up the case, there was a motion to dismiss on the ground that the Senate did not have jurisdiction because of Belknap's resignation. By a vote of 37–29 the Senate held that it had jurisdiction and that a trial should proceed. The vote to convict Belknap was 35 for conviction, 25 against it. This was five votes short of the required 2/3rds to convict. Most of the Senators voting against conviction were on record as doing so because they did not agree that the Senate had jurisdiction. Thus a majority vote of the Senate held in that case that such a trial was proper, but less than 2/3rds. (Most also indicted that they thought the charges true.) There was also the case of William Blount. Blount, a Senator, was impeached by the House in 1798. (In fact this was the first impeachment ever under the US Constitution.) The Senate voted to expel him. When the articles of impeachment came up in 1799, the Senate voted to dismiss the impeachment, on the ground that the impeachment process did not extend to members of the Senate, but not on the grounds that the expulsion rendered the proceedings moot. Should Trump be convicted by the Senate (which now seems unlikely) he might bring a court case claiming that such a conviction was unconstitutional. There is no knowing how a court would handle such a case. And if Trump is not convicted, no such case will be brought this time, either. This Washington Post opinion piece by two Constitutional scholars claims that such a trial would be constitutionally proper. It also claims that it would not have been proper had the vote to adopt articles of impeachment occurred after Trump had left office. Others have taken different positions. Whether a Senate trial of an impeachment is constitutional after the person impeached has left office is a hotly debated question at the moment. There has never been a court ruling on the point, and neither of the precedents is of a situation quite matching the current impeachment of Trump. No court has ruled on the matter. The Senate did not vote for a motion to dismiss the impeachment on those grounds, although if every senator who voted for the motion voted to acquit, Trump would not be convicted. From the comments I wish that any downvoters would leave a comment indicting what thy think is wring with this answer. In the absence of a comment, I cannot improve the answer, others cannot use the reasons to write better answers, and readers have no idea why someone objects to the answer. Such a downvote seems pointless. I have updated this answer with a discussion of the Blount and Belknap precedents. In neither case did the Senate actually vote to dismiss the articles because the accused was no longer in office, although that seems to be a major reason why 25 senators voted against convicting Belknap.
In New York State, towns are not &quot;part of&quot; cities; they are distinct political entities with their own separate borders, and they do not overlap or contain each other. You can see on this map (Wikipedia but I couldn't find an official one that was as easy to read) that the Town of Henrietta and the City of Rochester are separate. In fact, they do not even share a common border (the Town of Brighton is in between). The laws and municipal code of the City of Rochester do not apply in the Town of Henrietta, nor vice versa. Henrietta has its own Town Code, linked from its official website, but I could not find any regulations on towing vehicles from private property, nor in the Code of Monroe County in which the Town is located. So I would assume that New York State law applies.
I am presuming at this point that no one is &quot;the President elect&quot; in the eyes of the Constitution until the electoral college votes in December. In the 20th amendment, the beginning of the sentence is : If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died... So, that means January 20th, according to section 1 of the same amendment. At that time, not only have the electors already voted since at least a month, but Congress supposedly has certified the election of the dead guy and his running mate 14 days prior. That's the time when someone is or isn't president-elect in regards to this amendment. That's for your first sentence. Now for the rest, and taking your example of the 2020 election, if Biden had died between November and December, the options available to the Electors in each state are different. Some will be able to vote for someone else than Biden for president, possibly someone named by the DCCC, but many Electors in different states will not have that option. The way I see it, there's two options. Either there are no (or almost no) faithless Electors, then the Biden/Harris ticket gets certified on January 6th (what could possibly go wrong 👀), then pursuant to the 20th amendment Harris gets sworn in as the President on January 20th. Or, a lot of the Electors who can legally be faithless, get faithless, then the democratic electoral votes are split, no ticket gets to 270, which triggers a contingent election by the House of Reps (and the Senate selects the VP). Who they elect is anyone's guess. So, if you allow me a bit of presumption as to what you meant, you seemed to imply that Electors voting for a dead guy would be absurd, but in fact it seems like it would be the safest scenario for their party.
In Article I, section 9, the Constitution says: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken. A "capitation" is also called a head tax; it means you tax $X for every person. The meaning of "other direct Tax" is less clear; the historical understanding in the late 19th century was that it didn't apply to income. However, one thing that is clear is that it does apply to a property tax: if the federal government seeks to tax you on the value of your real or personal property, it must apportion the tax among the states on the basis of population. If Virginia has 2.5% of the US population and New York has 6.25%, then the total tax money collected from Virginia must be 2.5% of the total tax money collected nationwide, and likewise for New York; the total money collected from Virginia must be 40% the amount collected from New York. This doesn't mean Virginia's rate is 40% of New York's. If Virginia's land had a total value of 40% what New York's did, then the rates would actually be the same. But the ratio between tax collected from the two states would have nothing to do with property value; it would be just based on population. This is a rather convoluted and silly system; one theory I've read suggests that part of the point was to discourage these sorts of taxes unless they're truly necessary (and if they do happen, to collect the most money from the states with the most congressmen that could vote on the bill). But it's unworkable for almost any actual tax that's not a head tax, and head taxes are very much out of fashion. Most taxes have been considered to not be direct taxes. Income tax was generally not considered direct either. However, an 1895 Supreme Court case (Pollock v. Farmers' Loan &amp; Trust Co.) found that a tax on income which was derived from property (rent, dividends, interest, etc.) was effectively a tax on the property, and so was a direct tax. This would apply to only a subset of income (wage income wasn't included), but it's a reasonably significant subset. Many people didn't particularly like the decision; it pretty much said "the kind of income rich people make can't be taxed by a practical method, only this impractical apportionment system." The Supreme Court can be overruled via constitutional amendment; that's what the 16th Amendment did. It clarified that Pollock was no more, and that income tax didn't need to be apportioned no matter where the income came from. It was enacted precisely because apportionment is utterly impractical.