A spinoff from a back-and-forth in a current thread about constitutional law (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19439096&posted=1#post19439096).
I’m pre-embarrassed if the answer to OP is “Civil War ring a bell, Einstein?”
But the secession was debated by those states themselves; the US Congress in Washington DC, and SCOTUS were into this whole Union thing.
But everything is possible–hence, see query.
ETA to OP:
There used to be a slogan (it was “counterculture” in the 60s) “America: Fix it or Fuck It.”
Reading “Fuck It” as “Fuck it, I’m out of here,” undoubtedly there is a rich record of similar positions expressed to a greater or lesser extent by the representatives of secessionist states in the US Congress.
So it seems more than likely that the idea of “OK, don’t let door hit you on the way out” must have been “entertained” (as OP puts it) by other members of Congress.
Any help on that?
The problem of course is, much as we may be better off without a given state, how do we constitutionally remove the citizenship of its inhabitants? Even if the state agrees to leave, what about the people who want to stay? It’s not like Brexit; the Brits aren’t citizens of the EU, like Texans (for example ;)) are citizens of the U.S. You can’t vote away someone’s citizenship.
The answer is no, formally. I’m pretty sure the answer is no, informally. The official position is that the Union is indissoluble. More states can be added; none can be removed.
Behind closed doors: probably happens all the time, just like it does on the Dope.
We had an inconclusive thread on this subject a few years back: Could the U.S. eject a state from the Union?
The closest thing I can think of was the United States permitting the Philippines to split off and form an independent country in 1946. Before then, they were a Commonwealth (akin to Puerto Rico), but not a State, so they didn’t have the same legal status as, say, Michigan. In particular, the residents of the Philippines were U.S. “nationals” (not citizens) prior to the start of the independence process in 1935. And, of course, there was a strong independence movement within the Philippines before 1935 — they weren’t ejected against their will.
Interesting.
Great cite/thread.
Turns out OP Himself took part in it, to answer a funny with a knowing wink. OP has shit-for-brains.
I’d like to bump that thread, but it’s too late now. Topic for ATMB…
So then, to give this thread an independent reason-to-be, let it stand for research on any informal, behind closed doors–ref Exapno–discussions that may have taken place in ante bellum times.
[Thread also open to correction of Latin grammar … ]
The only example in world history I can think of is when Malaysia expelled Singapore from the union in 1965, after only two years.
The old Sultan of Brunei wanted it to stay a British colony. The UK pushed Brunei into independence just the same.
Then there is West Virginia. Without the agreement of Virginia (which according to the US constitution should have greed, but was in rebellion at the time) some 40 counties of western Virginia split off and declared themselves a state. They were recognized as such by the federal government and have continued as a state ever since. You can debate the legalities all you like, but the facts are incontrivertible.
Actually the US at the time would say they did have the agreement of Virginia - the committee that eventually created West Virginia claimed that the old Virginia government had given up its legitimacy, and formed a new loyalist government. The US agreed with this claim, and treated the new government as legitimate, after which that government voted to split West Virginia into a new state, which was accepted by the US. Legitimacy of government is usually an easy question, but sometimes it’s just weird.
What would happen if a state were wiped out by circumstances beyond the state or federal government’s immediate control (e. g. Florida sinks into the sea or the Russkies take over Alaska or something)?
The US Congress has at times refused to allow a state to join the Union. For example, the Mormon state of Deseret (now Utah) was refused the first few times they asked, until they had agreed (by a sudden new revelation from God) that polygamy was no longer allowed.
There were also others that were refused, usually because they didn’t have enough population or an organized government. And during the time just before the Slaveholders Rebellion in 1860, some states were held until there was a pair of slave & free states to admit together.
Congress has to vote to admin a new state – with one exception.
Canada was explicitly authorized to join the US without needing Congressional approval in the Articles of Confederation, the precursor to the current US Constitution. Whether that carries through to the Constitution is an open legal question, but rather moot until it happens.
20 years ago there was one academic, Walter Russell Mead, who speculated that Canada may eventually split into four countries (Pacific Coast, the English center including Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia/Newfoundland) with the Nova Scotia province finding it more advantageous to seek admission into the United States. I have no idea if that was ever very realistic but Mead noted at the time that few governments who started 1900 were intact by 2000. If that ever happened, it would be interesting to hear if Nova Scotia tried the “Articles of Confederation” approach.
Heck, the original State of Deseret never got admitted to the Union at all, at least not as one state, and it’s no wonder, looking at that map. “Deseret” consisted of almost all of Utah and Nevada, about 2/3 of Arizona, a big chunk of California, and swaths of Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. It was almost 500,000 square miles of territory, which would be almost twice as big as Texas.
Somebody once told me that the northwest-to-southeast jog that California takes along its border with Nevada was specifically put in to block off the proposed route to the sea that Deseret had, but I don’t know if that had any basis in fact.
Of course they are. UK citizens have been citizens of the EU since the concept of EU citizenship was legally codified in 1992. Like other citizenships, EU citizenship confers benefits such as the right to vote (for the EU Parliament) and the right to consular protection (by the consulates of other EU member states) when travelling. Most UK citizens will lose these benefits if/when Britain leaves the EU, the same way that citizens of Texas would probably lose the right to vote in US federal elections and to be protected by American consulates abroad if Texas were to secede.
The latter would require either a constitutional amendment or a major change in federal case law, though. I guess such a seismic shift in the nature of statehood could lead to a change in the way the courts view the citizenship clause, but as it is I think it would be clearly unconstitutional to take away someone’s citizenship just for being in a state that seceded.
Yes, it would be a tricky question because there isn’t any legal structure for ‘citizen of state X’, while UK citizenship is well-defined (with many variants, some of which aren’t EU citizens currently). It’s easy to say ‘OK, if UK leaves EU then none of the UK citizenships count for EU citizenship’. But there’s no state citizenship to point to and say ‘OK, Texas citizenship no longer counts for US citizenship’, and there is US citizenship which the Supreme Court has established you can’t arbitrarily remove.
Simple residency wouldn’t work, for example I don’t think it would be popular to legislate that the families of US soldiers stationed in Texas who moved to live near a base and can’t move immediately after the secession (mortgage, other jobs, etc) would be stripped of US citizenship.
On How The States Got Their Shapes, they mention that California was shaped around the Sierras so they could keep all the gold up in the mountains.
What does that have to do with being thrown out of the union? If anything, WV was thrown into the union.
The Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that the United States is “an indestructible union” from which no state can secede. A more perfect union and all that.