'Is Secession Legal?'

[Liability]

I swear people think they can just type freedom and liberty and constitution instead of making an actually sound argument. Shouting those words dont make you a patriot and therefore better than anyone else...even though you seem to want to delude yourself into thinking so.

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States aren't the final arbiter of constitutionality by ANY stretch of the imagination. States have Attorney Generals who offer opinions on legal topics in addition to upholding state constitutions. States also have their own supreme courts. If a state has an opinion, a justiciable case or controversy has to arise...then it moves up the judicial track. Eventually it jumps from state-level courts to federal-level courts and of course, as I hope we all know to the Supreme Court. That's how American law is determined. States don't just decide..."hey! I dont want to pay that, I'm not going to!"

What's amazing is what I typed should be known by your average high-school student.

In your highly informed opinion, then, if the Federal Government transgresses the very limits imposed on it BY the States ["imposed" when the States ratified the Constitution (the one that brought the Federal Government into existence) in the first place] and the States are aggrieved by the Federal Government's invalid usurpations, then the States can only "do" something about it by bringing a law suit. But, if a State's own Court agrees that the Feds have violated the limitations imposed on it by the Constitution, that determination is subject to a Federal review process. So, the Federal Government (again, in your highly informed opinion) is properly the only party to determine whether or not it has violated the rules imposed on it? Their objectivity is no way in doubt under such circumstances?

The whole notion of contract law appears to have eluded you.

Let's recap it. Let's say: You enter into a contract with a wholesaler to provide you with certain items for your business, but you stipulate in the contract, as a TERM of that contract, that this wholesale supplier shall be prohibited from competing against you in your geographic area. You honor your commitment and your end of the contract by paying the supplier and buying the product from him. The wholesaler honors part of the contract by supplying the product to you at the agreed-upon price, but you discover that he is also operating a competing business in your geographic area in an intentional violation of the terms of your contract.

Are you prohibited from voiding the contract with the supplier? HE breached it, but you are bound by it anyway?

Are you required to take the dispute to Court -- but you have to permit the supplier to BE the Court and the Court of last resort?

Of course not.

That which you entered into voluntarily upon specific terms and conditions may be withdrawn from if the other side doesn't honor the contractual terms.

Why on Earth would the States insist that ratification would come only upon certain precise restrictions but NOT have the right and the ability to withdraw from the Agreement if the Federal Government willfully violates those very terms?

 

[Vanquish]

Contract law hasn't eluded me in the least. You're misapplying it. The individual states weren't incorporated into the federal government as part of contract law. Perhaps you're referring to the abstract social contract 9th graders get taught...but that's abstract at best.

You can drivel all you want. I've explained the current process for states working out their issues. Has nothing to do with contract law. Can you show me the contract that each state signed with the federal government? I know you'll try to trot out the Constitution...but that still puts the Sup Ct as final arbiter of the law and the legislature able to make new law.

 

[Liability]

Contract law hasn't eluded me in the least. You're misapplying it. The individual states weren't incorporated into the federal government as part of contract law. Perhaps you're referring to the abstract social contract 9th graders get taught...but that's abstract at best.

You can drivel all you want. I've explained the current process for states working out their issues. Has nothing to do with contract law. Can you show me the contract that each state signed with the federal government? I know you'll try to trot out the Constitution...but that still puts the Sup Ct as final arbiter of the law and the legislature able to make new law.

The CONTRACT LAW reference was an analogy. Have one of your associates look that word up for you.

You may drivel and dribble all you want, but the fact remains, it is a very OPEN question -- your certainty doesn't change it at all in fact -- whether a State may choose to withdraw from the Union it agreed to enter if the "agreement" that made such entry palatable is being not just breached, but constantly trampled upon.

Lots of lawyers place a whole lot of stock in the claim by the SCOTUS that they and they alone "say" what the law is. Their willingness to buy into it also doesn't make it true. There may well be some validity to it; but then again, perhaps not as much as you and some of your brothers and sisters at the bar appear to presume.

The SCOTUS, as you might recall from even junior high school, has been known to get it wrong sometimes.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

It is only Legal if everyone agrees. Already established by the Civil War and a Supreme Court ruling, if you want to leave the Union it takes an act of Congress to do so.

 

[Charles Stucker]

Contract law hasn't eluded me in the least. You're misapplying it. The individual states weren't incorporated into the federal government as part of contract law. Perhaps you're referring to the abstract social contract 9th graders get taught...but that's abstract at best.

You can drivel all you want. I've explained the current process for states working out their issues. Has nothing to do with contract law. Can you show me the contract that each state signed with the federal government? I know you'll try to trot out the Constitution...but that still puts the Sup Ct as final arbiter of the law and the legislature able to make new law.

Can you show me the part of the constitution allowing an independent nation to be incorporated into the USA? If not, then the admission of Texas was never legal and Texas is then, by the Constitution of the USA, still an independent nation.
Oops.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Contract law hasn't eluded me in the least. You're misapplying it. The individual states weren't incorporated into the federal government as part of contract law. Perhaps you're referring to the abstract social contract 9th graders get taught...but that's abstract at best.

You can drivel all you want. I've explained the current process for states working out their issues. Has nothing to do with contract law. Can you show me the contract that each state signed with the federal government? I know you'll try to trot out the Constitution...but that still puts the Sup Ct as final arbiter of the law and the legislature able to make new law.

Can you show me the part of the constitution allowing an independent nation to be incorporated into the USA? If not, then the admission of Texas was never legal and Texas is then, by the Constitution of the USA, still an independent nation.
Oops.

You lose. The Constitution gives to the Government the legal right to admit anyone they agree to with in the frame work of admitting new States.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Contract law hasn't eluded me in the least. You're misapplying it. The individual states weren't incorporated into the federal government as part of contract law. Perhaps you're referring to the abstract social contract 9th graders get taught...but that's abstract at best.

You can drivel all you want. I've explained the current process for states working out their issues. Has nothing to do with contract law. Can you show me the contract that each state signed with the federal government? I know you'll try to trot out the Constitution...but that still puts the Sup Ct as final arbiter of the law and the legislature able to make new law.

Can you show me the part of the constitution allowing an independent nation to be incorporated into the USA? If not, then the admission of Texas was never legal and Texas is then, by the Constitution of the USA, still an independent nation.
Oops.

For your edification.

Section 3.

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular state.

Article IV | LII / Legal Information Institute

Article IV.

 

[Charles Stucker]

It is only Legal if everyone agrees. Already established by the Civil War and a Supreme Court ruling, if you want to leave the Union it takes an act of Congress to do so.

Might makes right, the old adage of the tyrant.
Lose the war lose the rights.
That's about what I expected form central power tyrants, but you? I thought you were better than that Gun.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

It is only Legal if everyone agrees. Already established by the Civil War and a Supreme Court ruling, if you want to leave the Union it takes an act of Congress to do so.

Might makes right, the old adage of the tyrant.
Lose the war lose the rights.
That's about what I expected form central power tyrants, but you? I thought you were better than that Gun.

I happen to BELIEVE the Supreme Court got it right in 1869. One can only leave the Union if Congress agrees.

 

[Charles Stucker]

I happen to BELIEVE the Supreme Court got it right in 1869. One can only leave the Union if Congress agrees.

I believe they got it wrong. In a sense. In Texas' case they decided the State Legislature could not undo what the people had voted upon (though anyone familiar with the initial vote in Texas to join knows how crooked it truly was) - but that leaves open the right of the PEOPLE in a state to vote directly to secede. Perhaps it is time to put that one to the test.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I happen to BELIEVE the Supreme Court got it right in 1869. One can only leave the Union if Congress agrees.

I believe they got it wrong. In a sense. In Texas' case they decided the State Legislature could not undo what the people had voted upon (though anyone familiar with the initial vote in Texas to join knows how crooked it truly was) - but that leaves open the right of the PEOPLE in a state to vote directly to secede. Perhaps it is time to put that one to the test.

And unless we have a pussy for President and a Pussy Congress, any effort to leave the Union will be met with the legal ruling they can not do so with out permission of the Congress. Backed up with force if needed.

 

[Liability]

It is only Legal if everyone agrees. Already established by the Civil War and a Supreme Court ruling, if you want to leave the Union it takes an act of Congress to do so.

If the Seceding Southern States had not committed acts of war against the Union, it is not 100% clear that President Lincoln would have sought to fight them.

Having done so and gotten that reaction, however, from the Union, the Civil War got fought and the South lost.

History is written by the victors to a large extent.

This does not mean that the basic premise of secession as a reaction to the willful violation of the precepts of the Constitution by the Federal government is invalid.

And one test would be: if (I'll pick on Texas again) Texas were to decide at some point in the not too distant future that they had had enough of the "Union," and were terminating the relationship, does ANYBODY really think this Nation would again choose to go to war over it?

Personally, I doubt it.

I do not advocate for Secession. I think we need to keep up the struggle to improve the Union -- all the time. But it seems dangerously naive to just assume Secession can't happen -- or that it won't. The rumblings have begun. The rumblings are valid in my opinion to the extent that the complaint is that the Constitution is not being honored BY the Federal government.

I have never accepted the response that "there's nothing that can be done about it." In my view, the Federal government had best get its shit together PDQ. What is the point of ignoring warnings?

 

[Charles Stucker]

And unless we have a pussy for President and a Pussy Congress, any effort to leave the Union will be met with the legal ruling they can not do so with out permission of the Congress. Backed up with force if needed.

Still a might makes right sort of argument.

 

[midcan5]

Damn, elect a slightly left leaning liberal progressive black man and the nutcases go even more crazy!

Secession now? It seems a nation, a democracy, is hard for some to accept, out of power they want to take their ball and go home to mommy. Personally I feel like using a phrase the wingnuts used to use often, 'Love it or leave it.' If you cannot accept the outcomes of democracy, Iran may be the place for you? Or maybe You all could buy an island somewhere and the wingnuts could live with the coconuts. Secession in the modern world is just 'whining,' it has no practical meaning.

"As I will explain below, it is settled law that the Constitution does not permit unilateral secession: A state or group of states cannot simply leave the Union over the objections of the national government. However, the arguments that led to this settled understanding are hardly unassailable, and the Constitution is probably best read as permitting the mutually agreed upon departure of one or more states."

FindLaw's Writ - Dorf: Does the Constitution Permit the Blue States to Secede?

 

[Polk]

Article III would beg to differ.

No. It wouldn't.

Yeah, it would, as judicial power is invested in the Supreme Court and lower tribunals as created by Congress, not to the states.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Article III would beg to differ.

No. It wouldn't.

Yeah, it would, as judicial power is invested in the Supreme Court and lower tribunals as created by Congress, not to the states.

There is NOTHING in Article III that says the Supreme Court is the final arbiter on what is Constitutional. That is simply how it has been since Jefferson let Marshall pull that stunt.

 

[BasicGreatGuy]

There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution itself that prohibits secession. There is nothing in the supporting founding documents that denotes any such thing. In fact the very notion goes against the very beliefs of the founding fathers and the primary reason they rebelled.

 

[NYcarbineer]

No. It wouldn't.

Yeah, it would, as judicial power is invested in the Supreme Court and lower tribunals as created by Congress, not to the states.

There is NOTHING in Article III that says the Supreme Court is the final arbiter on what is Constitutional. That is simply how it has been since Jefferson let Marshall pull that stunt.

Ever notice that in every one of these sorts of threads, you eventually, inevitably, get someone who declares the Constitution unconstitutional?

lol

 

[NYcarbineer]

There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution itself that prohibits secession. There is nothing in the supporting founding documents that denotes any such thing. In fact the very notion goes against the very beliefs of the founding fathers and the primary reason they rebelled.

The Supremacy clause requires the states to follow federal law. You cannot secede with violating that requirement. Therefore the Constitution DOES prohibit secession. Explicitly.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Yeah, it would, as judicial power is invested in the Supreme Court and lower tribunals as created by Congress, not to the states.

There is NOTHING in Article III that says the Supreme Court is the final arbiter on what is Constitutional. That is simply how it has been since Jefferson let Marshall pull that stunt.

Ever notice that in every one of these sorts of threads, you eventually, inevitably, get someone who declares the Constitution unconstitutional?

lol

Go ahead cite the sentences in article III that give the Supreme Court the sole right to adjudicate what is and is not Constitutional.