Does the Constitution define the Supreme Court, or does the Supreme Court define the Constitution?
Because it seems to me we enter a very sticky area if we rely on the courts to forever "interpret" the Constitution for us in any regard, whereby we tend to rely more on what they say than what the Constitution says. More than often, I've noticed, people cite the court only when the court backs up their point, and ignore those rulings which contradict it. Therefore we must be careful if we accept the premise that the law is what the Supreme Court says it is, for we effectively remove our claim as rightful participants in our political system.
That being said, I'd love to hear your comment on Lincoln's logic, that if any state be allowed to leave whenever it wishes, there is no limit to the ransom they may hold the federal government as a condition for their staying. Likewise, if no state may be compelled to stay, then neither may a city, township, neighborhood, nor household be compelled, by the same logic the Southern states were using. Here's the exact quote:
Again, if one state may secede, so may another; and then when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine, by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do, if others choose to go, or to extort terms terms upon which they will promise to remain... "
Purely from a logical standpoint, it is a recipe for anarchy, if not anarchy itself. At the very least, it is warlordism. Far from contributing to the system of federal checks and balances, the system would undermine and destroy the very thing it claimed to promote, and would guarantee governments everywhere toothless and inept. No such system is sustainable, nor would it be able to protect any type of universal freedom. The only stability any government could claim would be for the power that which it usurped apart from the system that created it. That goes for Lincoln, Davis, Ghandi, and Napoleon alike.
Well said..
For a strict constructionist, it would seem that the Constitution defines the court. The court under this model is accordingly tasked with being the arbiter of that constitution - in a sense, its guardian - but not its writer or rewriter.
That being said, I'd love to hear your comment on Lincoln's logic, that if any state be allowed to leave whenever it wishes, there is no limit to the ransom they may hold the federal government as a condition for their staying.
In a way, The Lincoln's argument here is a perversion of the concept of secession itself. Secession is asserted as a final right for extreme circumstances to in effect check the government against abuses. Lincoln calls it ransom, but I would call it another check and balance. He also seems to trivialize the act down a slippery slope by asserting that there is "no limit" to secession. In order for secession to function as a valid check on government power, it must itself be used in that manner prudently in order for it to have any impact. If a state were to cry wolf and threaten secession under trivial circumstances, few would have reason to take it seriously. Nor would that state likely succeed over something trivial, as the benefits of union in that particular case would outweigh the acheivement of that triviality.
Likewise, if no state may be compelled to stay, then neither may a city, township, neighborhood, nor household be compelled, by the same logic the Southern states were using.
Such an argument is a slippery slope fallacy. States are distinguished from all those other things as an entity of certain characteristics. The possession of the attribute of secession rights among cities and towns does not logically follow from the assertion of that attribute for a state.