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Posted on 07/14/2011 10:00:21 AM PDT by the scotsman
'North Dakota is amending its constitution because of a long-standing technical omission that some claim makes its statehood invalid. So does that mean it's really just a US territory and not a state at all?
Every American child is taught there are 50 states in the US.
But an 82-year-old care home resident in Grand Forks, North Dakota, is throwing the truth of that universally held statement into some doubt.
While reading the state constitution, which is 40 years older than he is, John Rolczynski noticed it omitted to mention the executive branch when explaining which new officers need to take the oath supporting the US Constitution.
This, he says, makes the state constitution invalid because it is in conflict with the federal constitution, which requires all officers of the three branches of state government - executive, judicial and legislative - be bound by the oath.'
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Yeah, given North Daktoa’s every-growing oil reserves, I’d say they should seceed and call themselves ‘Baja Siberia’.
One thing about it, they probably could go it alone with the oil that has been discovered under North Dakota don’t really think they will or even could if they wanted to...
If by "bound" they mean "take their oath seriously" then we haven't had a legitimate federal gov't in decades.
The federal constitution has no requirement for state constitutions, except that the federal constitution does guarantee a republican form of government.
BBC, as usual, doesn’t do well when it reports on US law.
Exactly. Not 57 or 59.
Darn! You beat me! Curses!
Would they be stupid enough to sign up now if they can escape?
So all the federal tax dollars the sent to DC over the years should be refunded to the state with interest, right?
From Wikipedia:
On February 19, 1803, President Jefferson signed an act of Congress that approved Ohio's boundaries and constitution. However, Congress had never passed a resolution formally admitting Ohio as the 17th state. The current custom of Congress declaring an official date of statehood did not begin until 1812, with Louisiana's admission as the 18th state. Although no formal resolution of admission was required, when the oversight was discovered in 1953, Ohio congressman George H. Bender introduced a bill in Congress to admit Ohio to the Union retroactive to March 1, 1803. At a special session at the old state capital in Chillicothe, the Ohio state legislature approved a new petition for statehood that was delivered to Washington, D.C. on horseback. On August 7, 1953 (the year of Ohio's 150th anniversary), President Eisenhower signed an act that officially declared March 1, 1803 the date of Ohio's admittance into the Union.
Something similar happened when Ohio was admitted in 1810. The error was discovered in 1950 and corrected by the Ohio Legislature.
“The federal constitution has no requirement for state constitutions”
Article VI states: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution”
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Article6
If a state’s constitution provides for no such oath to be taken by members of the executive branch, doesn’t that at least raise questions about whether the state is in compliance with this provision? I suppose a state could hypothetically make this a statutory requirement, but by definition, a statute could be repealed at any time.
Many states were not legally admitted.
New states have to be admitted on the same basis as (and with equality to) old states.
That means, among other things, that the federal government cannot attach conditions to a new state as a basis for its admission.
(Oklahoma wanted to be admitted but the feds insisted the state capital be at Norman, and not Okla. City. That federal condition was ruled to be invalid and illegal.)
Most western states were admitted under the condition that vast areas of their lands remain under federal control. (The most blatant example is Alaska.)
However, those conditions were (and are) illegal.
Ergo, either those conditions are invalid; or else the ‘conditional’ admission of those states was not legally valid.
It does actually. Read Article VI carefully.
It requires state legislatures/executives/judicials to be bound by an oath.
The only think between North Dakota and the North Pole is a barbed wire fence.
And that got blowed down last year.
I thought they were going to change their name to simply ‘Dakota’.
That doesn't mean the oath has to be part of their respective Constitutions. As a matter of fact, because of the Supremacy Clause, they're already required to take the oath by the US Constitution, and no further further Constitutional or statutory provision is required.
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