Your argument is the one the South made before and during the Civil War: the states were sovereign prior to voluntarily acceding certain sovereign powers to the Union under the Constitution. However, just as joining in the first place was voluntary, resigning was equally voluntary. Think as if you hire me as a caretaker for your property; you own the property and I oversee the maintenance. If you don’t like the job I do, you can fire me at will.
The North disagreed. It argued that the act of acceding to the Constitution was a permanent and irrevocable relinquishment of those certain enumerated portions of state sovereignty that once given, could not be unilaterally reclaimed. Think you sell me your house and pay me rent to continue to live there. You can’t decide to take back what you’ve sold.
I understand that the North’s position won only by brute force and an argument can be made for the South’s/your position, but I’m still not sure how you can baldly declare that it was simply the “right” of these states. It sounds like your opinion; one that has not been seriously held for 150 years.
I’m also unsure why you keep using the term “nation-state” as if it has some legal significance. We can use whatever term we want to describe the relationship of the states to each other and to the national government, and the debate over the competing interpretations remains.
Everything sounds like opinion if you don’t know the facts, but that’s just argument from ignorance. The fact, meanwhile, is that there are no judges over sovereign nations.
However, a sovereign nation is, naturally, the supreme authority over its own law; and therefore no higher authority can interpret it. Consequently, such a deliberate and intentional conjoining of nations into a single nation, would require their doing so through express and direct statements— never indirect or inferential. This was seen in the legal precedent which Akhil Reed Amar cites in his book “America’s Constitution,” as the 1707 Treaty of Union between the separate kingdoms of England and Scotland, to form the single new kingdom of Great Britain. Note the express and direction statements of such intent, manifested in the language of the Treaty:
In contrast, the Constitution never expressly or directly manifests this intention by the People of any state, to unite them into a single state. On the contrary, it was expressly assured them that this would not be the case, in the assurances made to the Peoples of the states by the Federalists— particularly convention-chief James Madison in Federalist No. 39, where he promised them that the new union of the states would remain to be voluntary and federal—i.e. not a new single nation, bound by the threat of military force against the People of each state:
And the People of New York and other states only ratified the Constitution in response to these express assurances, and therefore with this ratifying intent-- again, not that it was necessary to prove this, since sovereign nation-states cannot lose their sovereignty except by express action.
So while each state ratified the Constitution as a separate sovereign nation, the People of the state were their own supreme governing authority-- both before and after ratifying the Constitution; i.e. each state remained a sovereign nation, and the People of the state were its ruling sovereigns-- basically, the owners of the nation-state in question.
Madison later confirmed this in his 1800 Virginia Report, where he wrote the addressed the common equivocation-error regarding the various uses of the term “states:”
[QUOTE]
It is indeed true that the term “states” is sometimes used in a vague sense, and sometimes in different senses, according to the subject to which it is applied. Thus it sometimes means the separate sections of territory occupied by the political societies within each; sometimes the particular governments established by those societies; sometimes those societies as organized into those particular governments; and lastly, it means the people composing those political societies, in their highest sovereign capacity. Although it might be wished that the perfection of language admitted less diversity in the signification of the same words, yet little inconvenience is produced by it, where the true sense can be collected with certainty from the different applications. In the present instance, whatever different construction of the term “states,” in the resolution, may have been entertained, all will at least concur in that last mentioned; because in that sense the Constitution was submitted to the “states;” in that sense the “states” ratified it; and in that sense of the term “states,” they are consequently parties to the compact from which the powers of the federal government result.
It appears to your committee to be a plain principle, founded in commonsense, illustrated by common practice, and essential to the nature of compacts, that, where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges, in the last resort, whether the bargain made has been pursued or violated. The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the states, given by each in its sovereign capacity. It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as to the authority, of the Constitution, that it rests on this legitimate and solid foundation. The states, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal, above their authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently, that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.
“However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to he rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.”/QUOTE]
This was first officially claimed in President Andrew Jackson’s incorrect recital of history, when he claimed the following:
Of course, in reality, the Declaration of Independence did not declare the states to be a single nation-state, but several, in the Declaration of Independence:
So each state was individually declared as a sovereign nation to itself, and they mutually recognized each other as such And they likewise secured this status as their express intention, under Article II of the Articles of Confederation in 1781:
However, this was still simply a declared status that was mutually recognized among the states, which were still officially colonies of Great Britain at that point under international law.
Each state only became an official sovereign nation under international law, when recognized by Great Britain and other nations of Europe, in the the 1783 Treaty of Paris:
And this made them officially into sovereign nations.
Accordingly, the American states remain separate nations, by law; the People of the respective state remain the supreme rulers thereof— again as Madison writes, “derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves… The states, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal, above their authority, to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently, that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition (The Virginia Report).”
So the registered voters in each state, can overrule any legal by on Earth, by popular vote in state convention— just like the UK could overrule the EU in Brexit… and like they did in 1787 to ratify the Constitution in the first place.
Because the CSA did not secede from the USA, each individual sovereign nation-state did, separately and individually.
They ratified the CSA constitution after that. And sovereign nation-states are their own supreme rulers-- thus they don’t need a provision, any more than they did in 1787 when they left the USA to form a “more perfect Union.”
I’m not saying anything at all about the US. I’m asking you about the Confederacy, and you’re not answering me. I have to assume either that you either don’t want to answer me, or can’t. Again, I’m not making any argument about the US Constitution and nation-statehood at all. I’m asking you about the Confederacy, and specifically, Confederate notions of sovereignty, and asking you to make an argument. You’re not making an argument. You’re just telling me how ignorant I am. Well, ok, so I’m ignorant. Inform me then about the CSA and how its actions reflected its concepts of sovereignty. Please.
Correction, I don’t answer *to *you.
Again, it’s irrelevant to the legal issue of national sovereignty, which was all I mentioned. You are trying to change that, and demand I engage you on it-- PASS.
Online debate depends on intellectual honesty, and you are on your last leg regarding that one.
It was not “seen.” It was simply argued. That does not make the argument a failure, but it does not make it successful. It is simply one hypothetical view.
The theory ignores de facto agreements regarding sovereignty. Had such sovereignty required a formal declaration by each of the member states, Marbury v Madison would have been greeted with legislative declarations to refuse to abide by it. There would have been no Hartford Convention (and no threats from Virginia and the Carolinas to use force to compel New England to remain in the union), no Nullification debates, and a general dismissal by Northern states of the Dred Scott decision on the grounds that the Supreme Court had no authority over the states that objected to it.
There may be valid points in Amar’s arguments, but when a nation comprising multiple states chooses to ignore his arguments, they amount to philosophical theories, not real life.
“Expressly.” You keep saying this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
It never expressly says* anything *about the states uniting as a single nation-state… which means that they remain SEPARATE sovereign nation-states, all ignorance to the contrary notwithstanding.
And that’s what counts, not what law they choose to follow.
Is this an extension of the arguments for sovereign citizens being applied to subordinate governmental entities, i.e. states? Could this apply to smaller entities, such as cities and counties?
It means written out. In black letters. Not merely implied.
It is impossible to read the Constitution and not realize that the states acceded their sovereignty to the federal government. It’s written down in very clear words. Article VI is but one example.
(By the way, if you want to visit the BBQ Pit, people would like a word with you.)
But by your own admission, that would require it writing out, in black letters, that “the states accede their sovereignty to the federal government.”
They didn’t, and therefore by your own admission, they don’t.
Thus, all that’s left is what *you *claim is merely implied.
Somehow, you fail to spot the vast difference… no matter.
You’re making the common mistake of political fringe theorists; you think anybody who doesn’t agree with you must not understand what you’ve said.
We understand your beliefs. We don’t agree with them. Your beliefs are not in accord with history.
Abraham Lincoln did not invent a new political system. If he had, somebody would have noticed and commented on it. He was using the same system that had existed since 1789. Jefferson Davis and the Confederates imitated that same system.
Oh, no. I expressly mentioned that the *People *of each state were the sovereign national authority therein; because they are.
State governments were actually below the federal government in the Constitution’s delegated chain-of-command, but both were completely subordinate to the People of the individual nation-state.
FACT.
Hope this clears things up.
Yes, they did. I’m on my phone, so it’s a pain in the ass to do quotes, but I already quoted the part of the constitution that says they have to abide by federal laws - the opposite of your claims that each state is sovereign unto itself. There’s other provisions - the constitution, for example, requires each state to maintain a republican form of government. They are, therefore, constrained in how they can govern; Texas can’t choose a king, for example. They also have to give full faith and credit to the laws of other states. Again, this reflects a lack of sovereignty. Limits on coining money and imposing tariffs are in there, too.
If you can read the Constitution and conclude that each member state remains fully sovereign, I daresay that you quite missed the reason ratification was so precarious when it occurred.