But isn’t the US Constitution a contract between the Federal Government and the States? Absolutely!
Isn’t the 10th amendment of the “Contract” the opt out provisions given to the states if the Federal Government violates their end of the contract? Absolutely.
Nobody in their right mind would ever enter into a contract that gives exclusive rights for one party to violate the provisions of the contract without recourse?
The States would have never ratified the Constitution without the opt out provision the 10th Amendment legally gives the
states.
The only thing the civil war decided about states rights is that the Union North had a financially superior fighting force and the southern states were beat into submission.
The use of force in upholding individual state rights is specific in the 10th Amendment against federal tyranny. The southern states exercised their option and surrendered.
HOWEVER NOW I don’t believe the rust belt now has the financial power to hold the individual states hostage if the states decide to form a different Republic. A 235 year old contract is still clearly a contract unless 35 states declare it null and void OR the Federal government breaks it’s end of the contract, which it clearly has.
The 10th amendment has no “opt-out” provisions.
The constitution explicitly provides for new states, including rules for joining states, or for splitting states.
The constitution says NOTHING about a right for a state to leave, or the rules under which a state could leave.
If they wanted to allow a state to leave, they could have easily included a clause describing how a state could leave.
It doesn’t seem that even a vote by congress and a vote by the state would be sufficient to allow a state to leave. It seems you would need a constitutional amendment, either explicitly removing the state, or defining the method by which states could leave.
All the states are interconnected. You can’t just let a state leave — that state has had federal protection for years, meaning all of our tax dollars have been dedicated to the aid of that state, and also a lot of tax dollars have gone into things built in the state, and to people of hte state, based on our shared union.
So it makes sense that you would need all of the states together to allow a state to leave, which a constitutional amendment process would provide.
I wouldn’t want a state to be allowed to leave on their own vote, nor would i want the feds to be allowed to kick out a state on a majority vote. We are all in this together.