The State Title of Nobility Clause

No State shall . . . grant any Title of Nobility.

—Allyson N. Ho, Stephen J. Hammer, & David W. Casazza

The State Titles of Nobility Clause corresponds to its federal counterpart (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8). Both clauses derive from the same background and serve the same end: promoting republican self-government.¹

After independence, only some state constitutions guarded against titles of nobility,² but the Articles of Confederation prohibited the issuing of such titles both by the central government and by the states.³ A desire for uniformity on this point across the new Republic was thus suggested as another explanation for the inclusion of the prohibition on state titles of nobility in the Constitution.⁴ Accordingly, the clauses prohibiting federal and state titles of nobility were considered together during the ratification debates and have occasioned little distinction. For further elaboration of the history of these clauses, see Essay No. 75.

1. Federalist No. 39 (Madison). ↩︎
2. Mass. Const. of 1780, art. VI; Ga. Const. of 1777, art. XI. ↩︎
3. Articles of Confederation, Art. VI, § 1. ↩︎
4. One of the Middling-Interest, Massachusetts Centinel (Nov. 28, 1787), https://perma.cc/ETQ4-K6PW. ↩︎