Elizabeth Jo

And the clause also mentions territories, which is interesting, too, because many of our states have become states after having been a territory first, like Alaska or Hawaii.

And even though the admissions clause doesn't require it, Congress has sometimes required a proposed state to meet some conditions before it's allowed to become a state.

Do you know about the condition that Utah had to agree to for becoming a state?

Well, no polygamy, right?

So the Enabling Act by Congress that allowed Utah to become a state actually required the state to ban polygamy.

And what's even more interesting is that Utah is not allowed by the terms of its own constitution to allow polygamy unless not just Utah, but Congress agree.

In other words, Congress was so worried that the state might just go crazy with polygamy.

They were like, you can't even change your state constitution unless we let you on this subject.

So Congress can definitely do that.

If there's something that they don't like about a proposed state, they can say you're not allowed to be a member of the club unless you do this particular thing.

So hypothetically, if we were to do something like, you know, annex Greenland, not endorsing the idea, but if we were to do that, presumably the path would be Congress would give it the status of an American territory first.

Right.

Which gives it free reign to regulate the territory under the property clause.

And then maybe it would become a state eventually.

And if it did so, it could certainly require Greenland to enter into some kind of agreement that they would not do something or do something affirmatively in order to become a state.

Although we certainly have territories like Puerto Rico, of course, that have remained a territory for a very long time, even though there are

Certainly lots of folks who would like to see Puerto Rico become the 51st state.

So this is the part of the Constitution that kind of sets the ground rules for when a territory or an acquired piece of land can join the United States.

Yeah, essentially, it's kind of left up to Congress to make the political decisions about what to do.

And I can't even think of what would be objectionable in Greenland's culture that Congress might impose conditions.