No. Secession is not a reserved power of the states. The Union is indissoluble. SCOTUS has ruled on this. And that whole civil war thing. You’ve mentioned Texas v White, but you’ve skipped over that part. Can you address it?
Insurrection need not be violent. It could be violent, but it could simply be resistance.
It’s really not clear. The only thing that Texas v White talks about in this area is what you’ve quoted, ‘through consent of the states’. Is that the framework you are talking about? If so, that’s really really thin. Can you elaborate how that would work? I think a perfectly acceptable way that could work is through constitutional amendment. The U.S. Constitution that is. If it’s amended to allow secession then you’re in business.
Without an amendment however, it’s premature to say there exists a framework for secession. And calling it premature is being generous. Non existent would be more accurate. So yes, I think it needs to be revisited if you are relying on Texas v White. Please describe the framework that you think is provided therein.
Revolution, by its own definition, is an extra-constitutional remedy. It destroys any existing law.
“Consent of the states” must mean by the amendment process. As you note, the 10th amendment forbids the federal government from removing an existing state. An amendment would be required to grant the feds or any state that power (further the state itself would have to consent or else it would be denied its equal suffrage in the Senate: a no-no even for an amendment).
Clearly, you are wrong. I’m not going to cite the exception again as I’ve done it several times… Texas v White CLEARLY provides the avenue, and it is done in a rather short sentence. I"m referring to the verbiage that follows the *“except through… .” * It’s clearly spelled out in post 640.
In other news, the public comment period has expired, and the CA Attorney General will now review the initiative and return it for filing with the Sec. of State. One change was made to it when it was noted, apparently by the AG, that revising the CA Constitution is not possible, Amending it however, is.
Yes! And that consent need not be unanimous. 2/3 can vote. I"d be willing to bet by the time the referendum passes, CA will have support from the majority of the world. Even Putin, Trump’s BFF, will seize the moment to keep this in the evening news. The land of the free not allowing those who choose to to be free! Hypocrisy at it’s finest.
Or, we could follow CNN’s take on it.
The reality is that if California really wanted to, it could probably just leave the United States. It would be an unconstitutional, illegal act. But what could Washington actually do about it? Post another announcement on the White House webpage saying it doesn’t approve? No president would send in the military, would he?
So you are relying on the part that says ‘except through consent of the states’? Why not just say so? That means constitutional amendment - do you know that? No need to be coy about it and call it a framework or imply that Texas v White says the opposite of what it actually says. You say that the framework is in Texas v White, but it’s not - it’s in the actual U.S. Constitution. But even that is a stretch, because as it currently stands it is not there. The U.S. Constitution would have to be amended. CA could amend its own constitution until the cows come home and it would be utterly futile. To say the framework for secession is in Texas v White as you have done is like saying the framework is in any SCOTUS decision that describes the amendment process. It’s simply wrong.
It’s like one of those ‘if you give a pig a party’ books. Sure if you first posit that the U.S. Constitution will be amended to allow X, then we can do X!
BTW, you missed responding to the “indissoluble” part.
Is “I’d be willing to bet” supposed to be an actual statement of fact? If so, how much are you willing to bet? Or are you just using it as a figure of speech / hyperbole?
Depending on how one defines “the majority of the world”, it wouldn’t surprise me if some definition of that phrase would be happy to see the dissolution of the US. But the fact is, it matters not one wit what “the majority of the world” thinks. What matters is what “the super-majority of the states” think. And I’d be willing to bet (literally) that we won’t see the super-majority of the states approving CA secession in my lifetime.
Submit the #Calexit ballot initiative proposal to the State of California.
State of California conducts fiscal impact report.
State of California issues circulating title and summary.
The six-month signature collection period begins in Spring, 2017.
1M+ signatures turned into the State of California in Summer, 2017.
Vote to amend state constitution and establish a #Calexit vote in November, 2018.
Vote YES (or No) on California independence in March or April of 2019.
Assume it passes.
Now CA has 2 paths to independence.
First…*A member of the California federal delegation to Washington would propose an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allowing the State of California to withdraw from the Union. The Amendment would have to be approved by 2/3 of the House of Representatives and 2/3 of the Senate. If the Amendment passed it would be sent to the fifty state legislatures to be considered (to satisfy the “consent of the states” requirement in Texas v. White). It would need to be accepted by at least 38 of the 50 state legislatures to be adopted. *
Second…*California could call for a convention of the states (which is currently being organized to tackle other constitutional amendments as we speak) and the Amendment granting California its independence would have to be approved by 2/3 of the delegates to this convention. If it passed, the Amendment would be sent to the fifty state legislatures to be considered and 38 of the 50 states would have to approve the measure in order for it to be adopted.
These are the two possible paths for California’s legal secession from the Union*
I suspect Trump and his Republican [del]mafia[/del] cabinet will see this as a blessing. Having 55 blue votes removed from all future major elections is something they would like.
You talked so much about how much negotiating power California has in this situation, but you can’t even start your independence without approval of 38 states. It sounds like RemainderUS is the one with all the negotiating leverage.
You may not see it in your lifetime. But one thing we know without a doubt, nothing is forever. Not life, not the United States. It, like life, will have an end. This referendum may fail, only to rise again and again until it passes.
John Steinbeck in 1940 made perhaps the best argument for why CA wants to secede. This was a period of time when the US was recovering from the great depression. Times were tough.
Some time ago a congress of honest men refused an appropriation of several hundreds of millions of dollars to feed our people. They said, and meant it, that the economic structure of the country would collapse under the pressure of such expenditure. And now the same men, just as honestly, are devoting many billions to the manufacture, transportation and detonation of explosives to protect the people they would not feed.
Yeah, we have this albatross of red states around our neck. Personally, I’m not really worried, I have little doubt Trump will totally fuck things up so bad no one will notice our leaving.
No one notice? You need 38 of the states to approve it.
Personally, I’ll start a movement here in Utah to approve your CalExit amendment in exchange for $1 trillion, USD that is, cash, to the coffers of Utah, and some guarantee of an automatic deportation of any Californians trying to get to Utah. Maybe we’ll have you guys build a wall (and pay for it, of course) on the California border to keep the illegal immigrants out of the rest of the USA.
If we could build a wall to keep out homophobic morons, er I mean mormons and their homophobic magic undie wearing money out of California, I’d be all for it. Utah can go fuck itself. Hard.
So your thought is that the red states are suckling at the teat of California sooo much that California should secede. Yet, at the same time you believe that a significant number of those same red states that depend on California for their lifeblood (at least 38 of the total 50) will approve of the secession?
Again, not only the red states. Take all thirty states that Trump won, plus California, you would need seven more states who would agree to this.
And let’s say that your fantasy comes true. Then Alabama and Mississippi want to secede and have anti-SSM and no legal abortions. Do you support that, or do only left wing states get your vote to secede?
If you support that, then you will have wished a total destruction of the United States, which is frankly something I would not support because I lost one election.
A simpler way of achieving your goal (instead of destroying the union) is to strengthen the 10th amendment and return more power to the states…something conservatives have been advocating for years. Let all 50 states join together for common defense, but leave issues like marijuana, same sex marriage, abortion to each state without a federal government too powerful to encroach on California or Mississippi.