22 Feb 2023 7:41 am
If you recall, old SCOTUS rulings can be overturned, especially one that was primarily about debt and not about the authority of a state to secede. Since neither of us were present for oral arguments in that case, we don't know what arguments were made.Phelix_Dacat » 21 Feb 2023, 9:06 pm » wrote: ↑ Over 150 years ago the US Supreme Court, in Texas v. White, proclaimed you're full of **** and a total idiot, as well as a degenerate liar, too.
The position I have seen presented that, Constitutionally, secession is a matter left to the states is fairly simple. The US Constitution, in Article IV, Section 3, places the authority for admitting a new state into the union with Congress. However, nowhere in the Constitution, is there mention of a state voting to secede from the union nor does the Constitution lay out a process for secession. Thus, the 10th Amendment becomes very important. Just in case you don't recall, or are too lazy to look it up, that Amendment states;
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
The position that the "Southern States" did not (and could not) secede was a political one. If Lincoln, or Congress, publicly recognized the secessions of those states a much more complicated and time consuming process would have been needed to bring the country back together and start repairing the destruction caused be the war. It was not a decision made based on the Constitution or existing US law.