I again point out my point from my previous post.
The court in Texas v. White says it has the power to rule. But its power to rule over Texas post secession is exactly what we are arguing about in the first place!
You seem to be missing the point that those of us who have reached the conclusion that the decision to secede is reserved to the States and the people because it is not explicity prohibited by the Constitution are arguing that the laws of the US (and therefore the jurisdiction of the court) no longer apply to States that are no longer in the Union.
You are arguing that court was able to rule that secession was unconstitutional because States were not able to secede and were therefore subject to the rulings of that court. That is a circular argument. I ruled, therefore I can rule.
This is not a logical argument. The proof that your opinion is correct is dependent on your opinion being correct.
In your argument you state that it was a ruling involving the actions of an illicit secessionist government. That is the whole freaking argument! You cannot use the assumption that the secession is illicit as a proof that the secession is illicit.
You also state that you are a member of a partnership unless there is specific language allowing you to leave. Unfortunately, the Constitution states that unless something is expressly prohibited by the Constitution then those powers are reserved to the States or the people respectively. The government that the original States created was delegated limited powers for express purposes, and all other powers were retained by the States. It was not a general partnership with a blanket delegation of powers. Some States even mentioned in their ratifications that they reserved the right to withdraw the delegated powers.
Your argument about the original intent of the founders I also question. The founders had just "dissolved the political bonds" that bound them to England. To imagine that they would deny the same to their descendants is silly. England imagined that the colonists complaints were not tyranny but were instead just complaints about an exercise of legal power. Do those who determine that they are tyrannized get to make that decision or does the government they claim is tyrannizing them get to make the decision? The Federal government is not the sole arbiter of the extent of its powers as Madison and Jefferson indicated in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. IMO, a government or a court doesn't get to have the final say in deciding if it is behaving tyrannically or not. Similarly, a government doesn't get to decide if the people can withdraw their consent to be governed or not. BECAUSE NO GOVERNMENT ANYWHERE EVER WOULD.
When I mention Ex Post Facto I mention it in the sense that the Constitution was completely silent on the matter and that no court had mentioned it previously. The Texas v. White case was a post-war case that retroactively said, oh by the way, that was illegal. Not a legislative Ex Post Facto law that criminalized prior conduct for a citizen but Ex Post Facto in the sense that it cannot be used as evidence that the seceding States thought they were doing anything they did not have the power to do.
According to your philosophy, the people of every State must remain in the Union forever regardless of whether or not that Union is providing the benefits it was formed for. That makes no common sense.
As an example. Imagine every State in the Union decided that Alaska would become a permanent national wildlife refuge and no development would ever be allowed there again. The people of Alaska protest. The Senate votes 98-0. The House votes unanimously with only Alaska's reps voting no. The President signs it. The courts rule that the government has created wildlife refuges before and can do so this time.
Who gets to decide if this is tyranny? You say that the people of Alaska just have to smile and take it despite the fact that they deem it tyranny and that it removes the benefits for which they joined the union in the first place. You say that they must smile and take it and that the founders intended it to be so and would be opposed to them breaking the political bonds, opposed to them withdrawing their consent to be governed in such a manner, and be in favor of them being forced to stay in such a union at the point of the bayonet if necessary. I find that VERY difficult to believe. In fact I believe Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson would have a very strongly worded Alaska Resolution written in about a day and a half.
But thats just my opinion. Perhaps I am wrong and the founders and King George would get along well these days.
"You seem to be missing the point that those of us who have reached the conclusion that the decision to secede is reserved to the States and the people because it is not explicity prohibited by the Constitution are arguing that the laws of the US (and therefore the jurisdiction of the court) no longer apply to States that are no longer in the Union." I am not missing the point at all. I believe that your premise is without foundation. You have reached a conclusion, 140+ years after the fact, that there existed a "derived" right (one not explicitly stated) of secession in the Constitution. You do this from an historical point of view. The Supreme Court, about 10 years after the fact, determined no such right ever existed, and they made this determination within the legal framework provided by the document itself. Please note, that the priciples in Texas v White apply to all the states. California, Michigan, or Maine have no more right to secede now as they did 140 years ago; nor do Texas, or Virginia, or South Carolina. You believe that your perspective is as valid as that of the 1869 Court, as both are made after the fact; however you lack the legal standing and authority of the Court. There was no a priori verification of the so-called "right of secession."
You premise is that because secession was not explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, it is a right reserved by the states under the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment talks about "powers" rather than "right." The known legislative history of the amemdment indicates that it was almost an afterthought. It has been called a "truism." And no part of the legislative history refers to secession.
The modern interpretation of the 10th is "... to encompass any implied constitutional limitation on Congress' authority to regulate state activities." The 19th century intepretation was that "... Congress has no power to impose on a State officer, as such, any duty whatever, and compel him to perform it." Clearly, the idea was to limit the power of the federal government and to allow more local control. There is nowhere a discussion on the right of secession. The issues of the day were "national banks" and the "collection of taxes."
Your argument is that the Constitutional Union was a convenience for the "sovereign" states, that they could enter or leave at will. My view is that under the Constitution, "union" indicated permanency and a subjugation of some aspects of "state's rights" to federal authority for the purpose of building a nation.
In other posts on this thread I have described how a state, or states, might lawfully attempt to secede from the union. These were not my ideas - some belonged to Jefferson Davis before his jumped ship.
And now a short post script regarding Alaska. I am afraid that what you describe, hypothetically, is truer than you think. It is our heritage that if a people are oppressed, they have the right to revolt. With that right goes the unerstanding that if you fail, you will suffer the consequences. The South tried and failed in their War of Independence. Today, you can not seriously argue that no one in the former CSA is obligated to follow the laws of the USA. Either you are a part of this country, sharing in its opportunities and civil obligations, or you are an anarchist. The antebellum South died in 1865, a victim of its own rhetoric and lack of a solid moral foundation; and with it went one of the great evils ever to mar the continent.