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Nonsense. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and the states agreed to that as they joined.
Nonsense. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and the states agreed to that as they joined.
Yes, and the Constitution does not forbid them from seceding if they believe being in the Union is against their best interests. The federal government has to follow the Constitution too.
A state could not secede without violating Constitutional and federal law which states are prohibited from doing by the Supremacy clause.
It doesn't say that.
If you don't control your own affairs, you are not sovereign by definition.
Except the states do control their own affairs, and are perfectly suited to take up the powers that they ceded to the federal government if it became necessary.
It doesn't say that.
If you don't control your own affairs, you are not sovereign by definition.
Polk, are you honestly trying to argue that the States must be sovereign to themselves in order to have the right to leave the union they created?
If you don't control your own affairs, you are not sovereign by definition.
Except the states do control their own affairs, and are perfectly suited to take up the powers that they ceded to the federal government if it became necessary.
The states control their own affairs? Really? I guess I missed all those treaties Mississippi and Oregon have signed with foreign powers.
No, secession is not in there. That's why the states have the right to do so. Let me quote the 10th Amendment for you again.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
I'm still not seeing the word "secession" here. Maybe it's written in the corner somewhere.
Justice Chase didn't see it either, and he certainly knew the 10thA.
Looks like you're failing again here.
Apparently he didn't, and apparently neither do you. The 10th Amendment is clear. If a power is not denied to the states then the states reserve that power. Secession is not mentioned in the Constitution at all, which means that secession is not denied to the states, which means that they have the right to secede.
I'm still not seeing the word "secession" here. Maybe it's written in the corner somewhere.
Justice Chase didn't see it either, and he certainly knew the 10thA.
Looks like you're failing again here.
Apparently he didn't, and apparently neither do you. The 10th Amendment is clear. If a power is not denied to the states then the states reserve that power. Secession is not mentioned in the Constitution at all, which means that secession is not denied to the states, which means that they have the right to secede.
Secession isn't mentioned in the original Articles, but the Supreme Court is given the power to resolve Constitutional controversies, which it did in the case of Texas v. White:
Texas v. White (law case) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
(1869), U.S. Supreme Court case in which it was held that the United States is an indestructible union from which no state can secede. In 1850 the state of Texas received $10,000,000 in federal government bonds in settlement of boundary claims. In 1861 the state seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. In 1862 the confederationist government of the state transferred the bonds to several private individuals in payment for Confederate military supplies. After the Civil War the Reconstruction state government filed a suit in the Supreme Court seeking to recover the bonds, then held by citizens of various states.
It became the LAW OF THE LAND at that time, Kevin.
Apparently he didn't, and apparently neither do you. The 10th Amendment is clear. If a power is not denied to the states then the states reserve that power. Secession is not mentioned in the Constitution at all, which means that secession is not denied to the states, which means that they have the right to secede.
Secession isn't mentioned in the original Articles, but the Supreme Court is given the power to resolve Constitutional controversies, which it did in the case of Texas v. White:
Texas v. White (law case) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
(1869), U.S. Supreme Court case in which it was held that the United States is an indestructible union from which no state can secede. In 1850 the state of Texas received $10,000,000 in federal government bonds in settlement of boundary claims. In 1861 the state seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. In 1862 the confederationist government of the state transferred the bonds to several private individuals in payment for Confederate military supplies. After the Civil War the Reconstruction state government filed a suit in the Supreme Court seeking to recover the bonds, then held by citizens of various states.
It became the LAW OF THE LAND at that time, Kevin.
Yet the Supreme Court's decision was obviously not based on the Constitution, as I and others have shown in this thread.
Secession isn't mentioned in the original Articles, but the Supreme Court is given the power to resolve Constitutional controversies, which it did in the case of Texas v. White:
Texas v. White (law case) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
(1869), U.S. Supreme Court case in which it was held that the United States is an indestructible union from which no state can secede. In 1850 the state of Texas received $10,000,000 in federal government bonds in settlement of boundary claims. In 1861 the state seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. In 1862 the confederationist government of the state transferred the bonds to several private individuals in payment for Confederate military supplies. After the Civil War the Reconstruction state government filed a suit in the Supreme Court seeking to recover the bonds, then held by citizens of various states.
It became the LAW OF THE LAND at that time, Kevin.
Yet the Supreme Court's decision was obviously not based on the Constitution, as I and others have shown in this thread.
It doesn't matter. Because of the blanket authority given to the Supreme Court, the Constitution is what the judges say it is. (We've argued this point before.)
"We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."
~~ Justice Robert H. Jackson
Secession isn't mentioned in the original Articles, but the Supreme Court is given the power to resolve Constitutional controversies, which it did in the case of Texas v. White:
Texas v. White (law case) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
(1869), U.S. Supreme Court case in which it was held that the United States is an indestructible union from which no state can secede. In 1850 the state of Texas received $10,000,000 in federal government bonds in settlement of boundary claims. In 1861 the state seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. In 1862 the confederationist government of the state transferred the bonds to several private individuals in payment for Confederate military supplies. After the Civil War the Reconstruction state government filed a suit in the Supreme Court seeking to recover the bonds, then held by citizens of various states.
It became the LAW OF THE LAND at that time, Kevin.
Yet the Supreme Court's decision was obviously not based on the Constitution, as I and others have shown in this thread.
It doesn't matter. Because of the blanket authority given to the Supreme Court, the Constitution is what the judges say it is. (We've argued this point before.)
"We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."
~~ Justice Robert H. Jackson
It doesn't matter. Because of the blanket authority given to the Supreme Court, the Constitution is what the judges say it is. (We've argued this point before.)
" It only made the idea of leaving unthinkable because we know their would be a war where any state that wants to leave will be crushed by the US armed forces. " this statement shows where you err. Opinion and misunderstanding does not equal fact.The constitution strictly says that the federal government may only dictate to a state about what it can do when the constitution says they can about things that are prohibited to them. All other powers are reserved for the state and the last time I checked there is nothing in the constitution that says a state can't depart.
I don't think that states should leave but it is still a right that they have which makes the union a voluntary union of states that can leave and stay as they please. The civil war did not alter the constitution with new amendments forbidding each state from leaving. It only made the idea of leaving unthinkable because we know their would be a war where any state that wants to leave will be crushed by the US armed forces. This situation is not the path to freedom but to tyranny of the federal government because how can you say each state enjoys a status of being free if the federal government interferes with their own domestic affairs and forbids them from forming their own federation with other states or countries for that matter.
Secession isn't mentioned in the original Articles, but the Supreme Court is given the power to resolve Constitutional controversies, which it did in the case of Texas v. White:
Texas v. White (law case) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
(1869), U.S. Supreme Court case in which it was held that the United States is an indestructible union from which no state can secede. In 1850 the state of Texas received $10,000,000 in federal government bonds in settlement of boundary claims. In 1861 the state seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. In 1862 the confederationist government of the state transferred the bonds to several private individuals in payment for Confederate military supplies. After the Civil War the Reconstruction state government filed a suit in the Supreme Court seeking to recover the bonds, then held by citizens of various states.
It became the LAW OF THE LAND at that time, Kevin.
Yet the Supreme Court's decision was obviously not based on the Constitution, as I and others have shown in this thread.
It doesn't matter. Because of the blanket authority given to the Supreme Court, the Constitution is what the judges say it is. (We've argued this point before.)
"We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."
~~ Justice Robert H. Jackson
The Argument for a Right of Unilateral Secession: A Pact Among the States
The U.S. Constitution does not expressly recognize or deny a right of secession. Accordingly, the argument for a right of unilateral secession begins (and pretty much ends) with a claim about the very nature of the Constitution.
That document, by the terms of its Article VII, only obtained legal force through the ratification by nine states, and then only in the states so ratifying it. Because the Constitution derived its initial force from the voluntary act of consent by the sovereign states, secessionists argued, a state could voluntarily and unilaterally withdraw its consent from the Union.
In this view, the Constitution is a kind of multilateral treaty, which derives its legal effect from the consent of the sovereign parties to it. Just as sovereign nations can withdraw from a treaty, so too can the sovereign states withdraw from the Union.
The Arguments Against a Right of Unilateral Secession
Most of the arguments against a right of unilateral secession can be found in President Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address of March 1861. But as University of Texas Law Professor Sanford Levinson observes in a recent article in the Tulsa Law Review (and in condensed form in an April 2003 column on this site), Lincoln's case against a unilateral right of secession is hardly airtight.
First, Lincoln asserted that the fundamental law in every national government rejects the idea of its own termination. And indeed, as of 1861, no national constitutions expressly provided for their own dissolution. But this argument does not respond to the secessionists' claim that the U.S. Constitution's Article VII impliedly provided for the possibility of dissolution.
Second, Lincoln denied that the Union was a mere voluntary association--and claimed that even if it were, ordinary principles of contract law would bar unilateral secession. Lincoln noted that while one party can breach a contract, the consent of all parties is required to rescind a contract. But secessionists analogized the Constitution to a treaty, not a contract--on the ground that each state was more like a sovereign nation than a human being. And under treaty law, unilateral rescission is permissible.
Third, Lincoln claimed that the Union was older than the Constitution. In his view, it dated as far back as the Articles of Association of 1774, when the signatory parties were all colonies of England. Lincoln's claim, however, does not respond to the secessionist argument rooted in Article VII; on the secessionists' view, the Constitution implicitly affirmed a right to secede from the Union, regardless of the pre-Constitution character of the Union.
Moreover, experience in the very early days of the Constitution belies Lincoln's assertion. Nationalists frequently claim that the states were never sovereign: As colonies, they were under British dominion, and they declared and won their independence as the United States. Thus, the nationalists opine, there was no time during which any of the states exercised full sovereignty. Yet, as Professor Levinson has noted, that is not entirely true: North Carolina and Rhode Island, which did not ratify the Constitution until after President Washington was inaugurated, were treated by the new national government as essentially foreign sovereigns until they formally accepted the Constitution. That treatment, Levinson argues, and I tend to agree, indicates that all the states were in an important sense sovereign when they entered into the Constitution.
Fourth and finally, Lincoln denied that the Constitution was silent with respect to secession. The immediate predecessor to the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, purported to establish a "perpetual Union." By seeking to create what the Preamble calls "a more perfect Union"--in an echo of the Articles' language--the Constitution, Lincoln said, simply strengthened the already indissoluble bonds between the States.
But the Constitution itself was established in blatant violation of the terms of the Articles--which required unanimous consent of the states for any amendment. Moreover, how do we know that the "perfection" of the Union required stronger rather than weaker bonds? To infer this point from the fact that, on the whole, the Constitution created a stronger national government than existed under the Articles is to acknowledge that the real work in this argument is not being done by the language of the Preamble.
The Judgment of War and the Supreme Court: No Right of Unilateral Secession
Perhaps the best argument for Lincoln's view is one that he did not make expressly, but that can fairly be inferred from his general approach: Whatever the status of the states when they entered the Union, they perpetually gave up important attributes of sovereignty in doing so. Among these was--and is--a right of unilateral secession.
In this view, it is significant that Article VII sets out the provision for original ratification, and that Article IV empowers Congress to admit new States, but that no provision of the Constitution authorizes a state to leave the Union. The juxtaposition of what the Constitution says about states entering the Union and what it does not say about them leaving, indicates that the door to the Union swings in but not out.
But this inference is only that, and there was considerable uncertainty about the legality of unilateral secession in
I get it now. According to the state's rightists, the states' 'right' to secede is 'implied' in the Constitution. It must be implied, because it is certainly not mentioned, although regulating admission of states, etc., is lined out detail by detail. Hmmm.
I get it now. According to the state's rightists, the states' 'right' to secede is 'implied' in the Constitution. It must be implied, because it is certainly not mentioned, although regulating admission of states, etc., is lined out detail by detail. Hmmm.
I get it now. According to the state's rightists, the states' 'right' to secede is 'implied' in the Constitution. It must be implied, because it is certainly not mentioned, although regulating admission of states, etc., is lined out detail by detail. Hmmm.
For me it's a question of material terms and consent. Look back at the time, would the States have been likely to ratify the document and consent to ceding sovereignty to a new central authority if they had been told there was no way out? I'd say that's vital to the agreement between the States and the Federal government as well as among the States themselves, and material terms cannot be implied.
An academic question, but an important one.
The OP is correct. Secession is a legitimate right of the states.
The OP is correct. Secession is a legitimate right of the states.
I don't think so Tim. I think there might have been a High Court ruling in 1869 that covered this. See, Texas v. White. Oh yeah, you don't recognize the High Court's Constitutional authority. Never mind.
