re: New Mexico National Popular Vote Bill Headed to Governer's Desk

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So any form of government where laws apply would be a republic.

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Laws that supersede those making and enforcing them, yes. It is reference to where political power lies.

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That’s not the definition of a republic.

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Sure it is. You just have to study a little bit of history to know it. The term Republic is Latin from "Res Publica" - the public thing or the public affair. It literally means the central component owned in collective by the people - which, has the Romans described it was the "law." Thus, a Republic is a form of government where political sovereignty is vested in the law and not a person or group of people as it was in monarchies, oligarchies, or classical democracies as seen with the Athenians. It is often used as a synonym with "Commonwealth" which was the English version of the same idea.

The crux of the discussion simply revolves around the power of law and its creation, evolution, and dissolution. In Republics, like the US, law is not easily made and is, thus, given incredible power. At the federal level, we have no laws which are created through a democratic process given the requirement of the President to sign. But furthermore, prior to the 17th Amendment - the way intended by the drafters - there was even less democratic mechanisms to the creation of law on the federal level because only the House of Representatives stood for the proposition of the sloppily described "representative republic" as the Senate was not an elected body.

The drafters understood this. No need to take my word for it. Here is John Adams describing Republican government:

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The word res, everyone knows, signified in the Roman language wealth, riches, property; the word publicus, quasi populicus, and per syncope populicus, signified public, common, belonging to the people; res publica, therefore, was publica res, the wealth, riches, or property of the people. Res populi, and the original meaning of the word republic could be no other than a government in which the property of the people predominated and governed; and it had more relation to property than liberty. It signified a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them, was secured and protected by law. This idea, indeed, implies liberty: because property cannot be secure unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use, or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest for that purpose. It implies, moreover, that the property and liberty of all men, not merely of a majority, should be safe: for the people or public, comprehends more than a majority, it comprehends all and every individual; and the property of every citizen is a part of the public property, as each citizen is a part of the public, people, or community. The property, therefore, of every man has a share in government, and is more powerful than any citizen, or party of citizens; it is governed only by the laws.

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