The Titles of Nobility Amendment is adopted

wormyguy

Banned
Historically, the Titles of Nobility Amendment was proposed in 1810, passed the US congress, and was ratified by 12 states (out of 17). One additional state would have been needed to ratify the amendment, which could have been changed by a different vote in the South Carolina House of Representatives or the Virginia Senate. What if either of those states had adopted the amendment? What would have been the result of a more anti-monarchist US?
 
I think the domestic political implications would have been greater than the international ones.

An expansive reading of the amendment would invalidate most systems of licensure that grant some citizens the authority to enter certain fields of activity and not others. This would have been particularly important when the 14th [in that scenario, the 15th] amendment incorporated the federal Constitution's amendments against the states. Even now there are hard-core antigovernment types who claim that the Titles of Nobility amendment actually was adopted, but that a conspiracy exists to suppress the evidence of this in order to allow the continued existence of bar associations [which grant to attorneys the "title" that allows them to practice law]. I have to imagine that if the amendment actually did pass, this sort of levelling instinct would have been even more pronounced. If the expansive reading of such an amendment had made it into our case law prior to the Progressive era, our political development in the US would probably have proceeded in a more libertarian-leaning manner than was actually the case.
 
TONA was a lousy amendment. Strictly read it did not do any of the things it proposed. All it would have done, is harm the very small number of Americans who have inherited British peerages or Baronetcies or similar continental titles.

You would be hard pressed to apply it to Bar Associations or other professional entities as they are not noble titles. The idea that it would ban such associations is a late twentieth century fringe idea.
 
Among other things, TONA would automatically strip citizenship from anyone who would "accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power".

This is incredibly easy to technically violate accidentally. Imagine the political opponents of an unpopular President declaring that he'd automatically forfeited his citizenship (and thus become ineligable for his office) because he'd once bummed a cigarette off the Danish ambassador without an act of Congress authorizing it.
 
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