Okay, not a Monarchy, but an Autocracy. I forgot Saddam hasn’t declared himself king … yet.
Might makes right. The Constitution is just a cover for that, to placate the just. Only the just don’t run the army.
If you want your state to secede, you have to make it undesirable. For example, Nevada can’t secede because we need it for a nuclear waste dump. But Arizona is just desert. It can leave any time it wants to.
And the Army can sieze power whenever it wants, because its leaders owe fealty to nothing but themselves.
Oh, wait … they did take an oath to defend…
THE CONSTITUTION!
So did the President, who is nothing but the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. [sarcasm]He’s a real nobody in the Army, really.[/sarcasm]
:rolleyes:
If you believe George W. runs the country, you’re not paying attention.
But if he did, it would be worse. He has less respect for the constitution than any pres since Reagan.
Cites, please?
Actually the U.S. has cared a lot in the past if Rhode Island was going to join the union. Since Rhode Island showed no inclination of wanting to ratify the Constitution by the time Washington was inaugurated, Congress decided to take action. Congress threatened to start treating Rhode Island as if it were a foreign nation and imposing tariffs and treat all goods shipped from Rhode Island ports less favorably than those from European countries.
Faced with dire economic consequences, Rhode Island begrudgingly ratified the Constitution in 1790. North Carolina was a little bit tardy, but wised up a bit sooner.
The end result was that we all had to wait longer to get the Rhode Island quarter.
Don’t confuse “republic” vs. “democracy” vs. “monarchy” and “unitary” vs. “federal”. It’s like one set of terms is on the X axis and one set of terms is on the Y axis. France is a republic–a representative democracy–which is traditionally highly centralized; local governments (departments) have simply been administrative creatures of the central government. Conversely, the United States is a federal republic, with powers constitutionally apportioned between a federal government and state governemnts. A monarchy may be highly centralized, or it may be a feudal state with vassal lords to the king who have all sorts of rights and powers. In modern times, the United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven traditional monarchies, which retain considerable individual autonomy.
The assertion that the South’s secession was principally motivated by concerns other than the preservation of slavery is not a “General Question” (or a “General Answer”); it is not a factual statement (like “Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States” or “Article 17 of the Stalinist 1936 Constitution of the USSR guaranteed to each of the Union Republics the right to secede from the Soviet Union”); it is rather, a debatable–and in fact, factually quite dubious–assertion. If you want to assert that the South did not secede over slavery, you should do so in Great Debates.
Contracts don’t work like that. If two bodies agree to the terms of a contract, it’s assumed there are no terms other than the ones contained within the contract. So the fact that North Carolina agreed to join the United States, in full awareness that the Constitution had no provisions for states seceding, meant that North Carolina had no legal way to secede without a mutual agreement with the United States as a whole.
Now I could just stop there and say that because the Constitution doesn’t allow states to withdraw from the nation, they cannot do so. But going beyond that, the Constitution does explicitly forbid states from declaring themselves sovereign and independent. Section 10 clearly outlines a number of sovereign powers that states cannot use without the consent of Congress; forming treaties and alliances, printing money, imposing tariffs, maintaining an army or navy, declaring war, etc. When the Confederates declared themselves a nation and started doing these things, they were doing so illegally because they did not have the consent of Congress to do so. The fact that the Constitution explicitly outlines that the states surrender these powers also means there is no implied protection of these rights contained within the 10th Amendment.
AFAIK a constututional monarcy is a monarchy where the executive branch depends on the Monarch but the rights of the Monarch and his PM are restricted by a constutution that gives certain legislative and financial power to Parliament. In a parliamentary monarchy, teh head of government entirely depends on the Parliament; the Monarch’s role is merely symbolic, although he might formally appoint the PM.
In this sense Britain is a parliamentary, not a constitutional (Britain doesn’t have a proper constitution) monarchy.
Quite a mess with all those terminological nuances 
And it drifts away from the OP more and more and more…
Just as an observation, it seems to me that the appointment of a (figure)head of state and vesting of true power at a “lower” level (without a direct vote) gives pretty much the same results without so much ballyhoo and money-spending. If the leader of a party is someone that is widely seen to be unsuitable to lead the country, then people won’t vote for that party. It basically means you don’t have to be rich to be prime minister (i’m sureit helps! :P), which seems to be a more representative system, to me! (If this is unclear, i mean the westminister system)
Any opinions? or am i too far OT?
Isn’t that the system most of the world is ruled by?
That’s exactly what a parliamentary republic is all about. I personally think it’s the most practicable form of democracy, although one might argue it doesn’t have true separation between legislative and executive branch.
It seems to me that the Declaration of Independence (admittedly, not a legal document, but one that embodies American ideas about states and revolutions) endorses armed rebellion; to wit:
“We hold these truths to be self evident: …that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it… .”
Decl. Ind. para. 2
However, national governments have the inherent power to keep parts of the country from running out like sand through a sieve. Suppressing insurrection is one of those things all governments can do by definition of their existance. All governments have the power to prevent the radicals from torching the White House.
Net result (IMHO): You may attempt to seceed (It is a self evident truth). We (the gov’t, the rest of the people) may prevent you by force or other means (its our right as a government).
[/Joe Pesci] You seceedin’ from me? You seceedin’ from me!?! [/Joe Pesci]
kdeus
Except that the Declaration of Independence has no force of law, kdeustachio, and the General Question here is really a legal one.
Houlihan: That argument of yours is actually a pretty clever way of distinguishing Texas v. White. Where I think it fails is that the Court did not in any way indicate that its decision hinged on whether the state government or the people directly declared secession. Because the state/people distinction played no part in the Court’s reasoning, I would submit that White still stands for the broad proposition that secession without consent is illegal.
Also, as I read the 10th Amendment, it says the powers not delegated to the feds belong to the states or the people, not to the states or, if and only if the states haven’t claimed those non-delegated powers for themselves, to the people. But that observation brings one to the whole question of what is the source of governmental/political power, and that’s GD territory if ever there was such a thing.
I respectfully disagree as to your first point. You argue that because the Court did not cite the state/people distinction as the basis of its decision, the distinction is invalid. The Court decided the case on the facts it was presented, and in its statement of facts, labeled the actions by the people of Texas “unlawful.” Thus, a lawful attempt to seceed was not at issue, the distinction was not under consideration and the Court need not address it. Consider this: imagine that the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty in the appeal of a murderer who killed in cold blood, without mitigating circumstances. Can a prosecutor argue in a later case that the doctrine of self-defense is no longer valid, because the Court did not address it in the previous case, even though no facts supported invoking self-defense in the previous case? Surely not.
As to your second point, I agree that I short-cutted my analysis of the Tenth Amendment, in that the reservation of power is stated in the disjunctive. However, every state constitution I have ever seen (about a dozen), patterns itself after the U.S. Constitution, and the people of the state grant the state some powers, and reserve to themselves some powers. So because the “people” referenced in the Tenth Amendment have also granted powers to the state wherein they live, the practical effect, when analyzing who holds a particular power, is to look first to see if the Federal Government has it (due to the Supremacy Clause), then to the State Constitution, then all other powers are reserved to the people. Admittedly, the Texas Constitution, as in effect in the 1860’s, is not available for my review, but I think its safe to assume that all referendum functions were reserved to the state government. In any event, the Texas v. White Court found the actions of the Texas populace were unlawful, which suggests to me, anyway, that the Texas Constitution was violated. I thereby stand by my original analysis.
Minty, you have a well reasoned and well supported argument, and I hope you take no offense to my different opinion. Our points are more-or-less in equipoise, and this discussion is good evidence that ALL legal questions should be moved to GD, because the law is ever debatable.
Here’s a copy of the 1845 constitution, which (with the amendment included) was valid in 1861, when the secession convention met. After secession, the convention then created a new constitution.
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/constitutions/text/1845index.html
This may not be the most contemporarily relevant thread ever posted, but I assume the SD philosophy is something to the effect that “knowledge is an intrinsic good–if it really IS knowledge.” So.
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The “official,” first-dictionary-definition meaning of REPUBLIC is, indeed, a non-monarchical state in which the people have, in essence, the last word legally and constitutionally. A DEMOCRACY has the same definition in essence–but without explicit mention of “non-monarchical.” There are thus, formally, monarchical democracies but no monarchical republics. But words mean what people mean by them, and since roughly the 1950’s American conservatives have tended to urge a secondary dictionary definition of REPUBLIC, namely that it implies representative, as opposed to plebiscitary, forms of governance.
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Do states have a (legal) right to secede? Our present Constitution became effective on June 21, 1788, when ratified by New Hampshire. Though a new government was formed thereby, a new country was not: this Constitution was, formally and legally, a massive “amendment” to the existing Articles of Confederation, which were never repealed but were superceded (to some consternation). The Articles referred to “perpetual union” among the thirteen named states (including Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas); further: “…the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration hereafter be made…unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States.” Consider further this quote from the Constitution VI,1): “All…engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.” Perhaps a stretch, but some support for the idea that the obligations of the States to the Union under the Articles were not simply erased wholesale.
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Consider also the role of the supremacy clause (VI,2); (Art. IV, 3, Sect. 1) prohibiting the formation of any new state by the “juncture of two or more States” without the consent of Congress; various Art. I, Sect 10 limits on the powers of the States regarding entering into treaties, alliances, or any “confederation” (!!); coining money; impairing the obligations of contracts (including contracts with the northern states); keeping troops; or entering into “any agreement or compact with another State” without consent of Congress. Then there is also the Article VI provision, explicitly applying to State legislators and executives, requiring an oath of support to the Constitution.
Fine, nothing in the Constitution says “Thou shalt not secede.” But implication and common sense are given a degree of weight in the law–particularly when all are on the one side, and none on the other.
Except that the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t get to decide what Texas law is. And if findlaw wasn’t down this evening, I’d even provide you the Supreme Court opinion by Justice Holmes that makes precisely that point.
Ouch! I now see the error of my prior arguments. I forgot completely about the doctrine of implication and common sense. Wasn’t common sense at the basis of such gems as Plessy v. Ferguson? I concede.
Seriously though, I have tried to present as close to a factual answer to a factual question as possible. If you don’t like the answer, you are free to go debate about common sense in the Great Debates forum.
Almost. The U.S. Supreme Court is required to defer to state courts on matters of state common law. But when a state’s decisional law is silent on a point, the U.S. Supreme Court is free to engage in its own inquiry. c.f. Mcmillian v Monroe County 520 U.S. 781, 785 (1997) (“our inquiry is dependent on an analysis of state law”).
I believe the case you recall is actually Judge Brandies’ opinion in Erie R.R. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938). The so-called “Erie doctrine” arose from the first two syllabi of the case, to wit:
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The liability of a railroad company for injury caused by negligent operation of its train to a pedestrian on a much-used, beaten path on its right-of-way along and near the rails, depends, in the absence of a federal or state statute, upon the unwritten law of the State where the accident occurred. Pp. 71 et seq.
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A federal court exercising jurisdiction over such a case on the ground of diversity of citizenship, is not free to treat this question as one of so-called “general law,” but must apply the state law as declared by the highest state court. Swift v. Tyson, 16 Pet. 1, overruled. Id.
Clearly, by its own terms, the Erie Doctrine is concerned with the preservation of state common law, and does not preclude the Federal Courts from making incidental determinations of law when the state courts are silent on the issue.
If I am forgetting a Holmes opinion on the topic, please re-educate me.