Sorry White House Petitioners, There’s No Way To Secede From The United States
Sorry
White House Petitioners, There’s No Way To Secede From The United States
November 14, 2012 by Jean
Wile | Nov. 14, 2012, 11:37 AM
Source: Business
Insider
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residents in a host of states have expressed a desire to “secede” from the
United States.You can find petitions for the idea on the White
House’s website.
you’ll recall some Vermonters
asked to secede after President Bush’s reelection in 2004.
But can states actually
secede?
Not without a fight.
And we all know how that
ended.
In 1978, Kenneth M.
Stampp, who some believe to be the greatest Civil War historian of the 20th
century, wrote that the constitution is actually silent on secession — and so
in theory, the claims for secession were as strong as the ones against it.
University of Illinois’ Legal History Program, recently wrote in
a symposium on the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War:
Stampp poses the
question: “was secession unconstitutional?” And answers with, to my mind, a salutary
and even correct answer: “we
don’t know.”
In the same symposium,
Stephen C. Neff, a professor at the Edinburgh Law School, said the South’s
used a “breach-of-compact theory” to justify secession. Southern
legislatures asserted America was fundamentally a contractual union
between sovereign states:
… which retained all
aspects of their sovereignty after entry into the Union, save those that
they had expressly delegated to the federal government. That original
Constitutional contract—or compact—like any other contract, retained its
legal validity only so long as the parties continued faithfully to adhere
to it. Any breach of the compact by parties to it automatically entitled
the innocent parties to withdraw from the arrangement.
But Neff adds: “Support
for this line of argument in the text of the Constitution itself was
altogether absent.”
As it turns out, the
question ended up not being litigated in the Supreme Court —as would usually be
done when states challenge federal law — but fought over for five bloody years.
Neff:
In 1871, Justice Joseph
P. Bradley of the federal Supreme Court pronounced it to have been “definitely
and forever overthrown.” What Justice Bradley tactfully left unmentioned
was that overthrow had taken place on the fields of battle rather than in the
panelled rooms of courts or legislatures. The question of the nature of
the federal Union, in event, proved to be neither a judicial nor a political
question, but a military one.
to forcefully ignore federal law? Say, failing to implement school
integration? Arkansas tried that in 1957, and
failed.
legend retains its own special secession clause? Supreme Court Justice
Salmon P. Chase settled that question all the way back in 1869:
When, therefore, Texas
became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All
the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican
government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which
consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it
was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was
final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as
perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There
was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or
through consent of the States.
So sorry, angry states:
this is probably a dead end.
NESARA- Restore America – Galactic News
2012-11-15 01:40:25
Source: http://nesaranews.blogspot.com/2012/11/sorry-white-house-petitioners-theres-no.html
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