Posted on 03/13/2017 3:56:13 AM PDT by Jacquerie
The Framing generation bequeathed a brilliant governing form to posterity. Perhaps its most notable feature is the separation of powers. Far less well-known, yet just as important, is what the Framers did with legal and political sovereignty. To review from previous posts:
The legal sovereign has unlimited, absolute, and supreme law-making power. The Constitution is the supreme law-making expression of the legal sovereign.
The political sovereign is the single person or body that writes statutes. As per Article I § 1, Congress is Americas political sovereign; it is responsible for crafting statutes necessary and proper to implement enumerated powers.
Both sovereignties are indivisible, and in most governments, they are coincident. The King in Parliament, aka Parliament, was legally and politically sovereign. The English constitution was whatever Parliament decided it to be. No Parliament could encumber future Parliaments. Since sovereignty is indivisible, Parliament could not share its supreme and statutory lawmaking sovereignty with another person or institution.
Upon independence, each state legislature assumed the qualities of legal and political sovereign. It is why they easily, and with clear consciences, ignored or violated the Articles of Confederation. Since sovereignty is indivisible, it wasnt shared with the Continental Congress.
When the federal convention of 1787 issued its draft Constitution to Congress, it appeared to Anti-Federalists that the Framers attempted the impossible. Didnt they split both babies, legal and political sovereignty between two classes of government, the new federal and preexisting state governments? There must be a single supreme authority. If the new government was supreme, it meant the dissolution of state authority.
(Excerpt) Read more at articlevblog.com ...
Bkmk
This is a very enriching exposition. Still reading and digesting.
Nice. I like watching the libtard judiciary encouraging the coming Article V Convention.Maybe that would make for a good topic for one of your posts.
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