Justice Marshall:
"The mischievous consequences of the construction contended for on the part of Virginia, are also entitled to great consideration. It would prostrate, it has been said, the government and its laws at the feet of every state in the Union. And would this not be the effect? What power of the government could be executed by its own means, in any states disposed to resist its execution by a course of legislation?...each member will possess a veto on the will of the whole...there is certainly nothing in the circumstances under which our constitution was formed; nothing in the history of the times, which justify the opinion that the confidence reposed in the states was so implicit as to leave in them and their tribunals the power of resisting or defeating, in the form of law, the legislative measures of the Union..."
Justice Story:
The constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the constitution declares, by "the people of the United States." There can be no doubt that it was competent to the people to invest the general government with all the powers which they might deem proper and necessary; to extend or restrain these powers according to their own good pleasure, and to give them a paramount and supreme authority. As little doubt can there be that the people had a right to prohibit to the states the exercise of any powers which were, in their judgment, incompatible with the objects of the general compact; to make the powers of the state governments, in given cases, subordinate to those of the nation, or to reserve to themselves those sovereign authorities which they might not choose to delegate to either."
Justice Taney didn't write the opinon is the Prize Cases but concurred with:
"A civil war exists, and may be prosecuted on the same footing as if those opposing the Government were foreign invaders, whenever the regular course of justice is interrupted by revolt, rebellion, or insurrection, so that the Courts cannot be kept open.
"The present civil war between the United States and the so-called Confederate States has such character and magnitude as to give the United States the same rights and powers which they might exercise in the case of a national or foreign war..."
You have to pick and choose what suits you because the whole record doesn't support your position. You know not a one of these Justices will support a right to unilateral state secession-- which all three of the Justices you name (but don't quote) were solidly on the record as opposing.
The slave holders didn't go to the Court because they knew they had no case. Your misrepresenting and cherry picking the record won't help you establish that they did have one.
Walt
Why, Walt: is that a 'straw man' argument you just posted? I provided references to the suspension of the writ, not secession. How do you respond? You change the subject and claim that "not a one of these Justices will support a right to unilateral state secession!"
I never claimed they did, now did I?
Obviously it is you, not I, who is "misrepresenting and cherry picking the record." Your own posts prove it...
;>)