Can a State Legally Secede

There is nothing, I repeat nothing, in the Constitution that gives a state the right to secede. In fact, the whole document, which sometimes seems dear to Mr. Moster, is based on the assumption that there is a union of states destined for eternity. Mr. Moster wants to argue that the Tenth Amendment gives states the power to secede. But it certainly extends linguistics to its breaking point. The amendment states in its entirety: “Powers not conferred on the United States by the Constitution or prohibited by it to states are reserved to states or peoples.dem.” When 11 southern states decided to secede from the Union, the result was a terrible war in which about 620,000 soldiers died. This bleak result would have provided the answer to the question of whether the United States would tolerate states trying to secede from the Union. Chase, [Chief Justice], ruled in favor of Texas on the grounds that the government of the Confederate state of Texas had no legal existence because texas` secession from the United States was illegal. The crucial conclusion behind the verdict that Texas could not secede from the United States was that after its admission to the United States in 1845, Texas had become part of an “indestructible union of indestructible states.” In practice, this meant that Texas had never seceded from the United States. [58] This secessionist movement led to the Civil War. The Union`s position was that the Confederation was not – and never had been – a sovereign nation, but that the “Union” was always a single nation, according to the intention of the States themselves, from 1776 onwards – and that thus a rebellion of individuals had been initiated. Historian Bruce Catton described President Abraham Lincoln`s proclamation of April 15, 1861, after the attack on Fort Sumter, which defined the Union`s position on hostilities: After President Barack Obama`s re-election victory on November 6, nearly one million Americans from all 50 states signed petitions to secede from the United States of America.

The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, “If there is a constitutional problem solved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secession.” Others, such as Chief Justice John Marshall, who had been Virginia`s delegate to the Ratification Convention (Federal Assembly), denied that ratifying the Constitution was a precedent for a future single dissolution of the Union by one or more isolated states. Marshal wrote in 1824, in the midst of the fall of the Articles of Confederation and the rise of a second self-proclaimed American Confederation, summing up the subject as follows: “Reference has been made to the political situation of those states that were about to form [the Constitution]. They were said to be sovereign, completely independent, and connected only by a league. That`s right. But when these allied sovereigns transformed their league into a government, when they transformed their Congress of Ambassadors, charged with deliberating on their common concerns and recommending measures of general interest, into a legislature empowered to legislate on the most interesting issues, the whole character in which states seem to appear changed. [20] Rumors of likely secessionist movements have been triggered. There were also rumors that some states were considering leaving the American Union and forming a regional confederation. America, it was said, would follow the path of Europe, and eventually three or four or more confederations would emerge. Not only would these confederations be able to take measures that would exceed Congress` capabilities under the articles, but some would privately portray such a decision in a positive light, as the Regional Union could adopt constitutions that protect property rights and maintain order.

[d] Historical and legal precedents make it clear that Texas could not leave the Union – at least not legally. Well, Mr Moster, as you say, the end does not justify the means, and a constitutional provision that is supposed to govern the Member States cannot be interpreted as a permit to leave the very Union that granted them their rights as trade union members in the first place.