Posted on 04/17/2009 10:17:36 AM PDT by RED SOUTH
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 or bars it from doing so. The constitution does not say anything about states leaving.
With respect to the possibility of secession by mutual agreement, we are left in much the same position that Americans in the first seven decades of the Union occupied with respect to unilateral secession: We must struggle to interpret the sounds of the Constitution’s silence.
That conclusion in turn suggests that no court will likely answer the question—except perhaps in the way that the Supreme Court in Texas v. White gave its retroactive approval to the verdict of the Civil War battlefield.
This is where the movement gets into crazy town.
Despite their rhetoric about the permanence and indestructibility of the Union, both Lincoln in his First Inaugural, and the Supreme Court in Texas v. White, strongly implied that it would be possible for one or more states to leave the Union with the consent of the Union as a whole.
By what legal mechanism would such secession through mutual agreement be accomplished? The most obvious answer is a statute enacted by Congress. Just as Congress can approve the admission of new states, the argument would go, so it can let old states leave.
Nothing prohibits them from leaving. They just can’t form a confederation.
Texas is the only state that can secede.
Among the Founding Fathers there was no doubt. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to “alter or abolish” — by force, if necessary — a despotic government.
Even in The Federalist, the brilliant propaganda papers for ratification of the Constitution (largely written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison), the United States are constantly referred to as “the Confederacy” and “a confederate republic,” as opposed to a single “consolidated” or monolithic state. Members of a “confederacy” are by definition free to withdraw from it.
Hamilton and Madison hoped secession would never happen, but they never denied that it was a right and a practical possibility. They envisioned the people taking arms against the federal government if it exceeded its delegated powers or invaded their rights, and they admitted that this would be justified. Secession, including the resort to arms, was the final remedy against tyranny. (This is the real point of the Second Amendment.)
Amen. It allows the entire conservative movement to be painted as whack-jobs and gives comic fodder to every late-night comedian and snarky faux news show.
We don't need to give the leftist anymore clubs to beat us with.
I’m not a Constitutional Scholar, but when I was in school, I was taught that both California and Texas had the right to secede from the union. This right was incorporated into the treaty between the California Republic and the US when California joined the union. Texas is in a similar situation as the only other nation to voluntarily join the US.
That being said, I think it would be a stupid idea.
The Roman Empire used to consist of many current european countries, so why did they split? Why did USSR split? Why did East Timor leave Indonesia? When central government start being too oppresssive
Ummm, didn’t we settle this question, oh, around 144 years ago?
Texas can become five states but it can’t legally secede.
Article V authorizes a Constitutional Convention. No result of the convention becomes law unless 3/4ths of the sates ratify it. Anyone care to guess whether or not 3/4th of the states in this country are more conservative (well, republican) or more liberal communist?
The Constitution itself is silent on the subject, but since secession was an established right, it didn’t have to be reaffirmed. More telling still, even the bitterest opponents of the Constitution never accused it of denying the right of secession. Three states ratified the Constitution with the provision that they could later secede if they chose; the other ten states accepted this condition as valid.
A few states tried this a while back.
It ended rather badly.
Montana
Dixie ping
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