It was the official, legal opinion of the Circuit court in question, and until appealed, is the "law of the land."
No, Merryman was issued by Chief Justice Taney as an in-chambers opinion from the Supreme Court.
Posted on 01/13/2004 9:01:35 AM PST by Aurelius
Dust jackets for most books about the American Civil War depict generals, politicians, battle scenes, cavalry charges, cannons[sic] firing, photographs or fields of dead soldiers, or perhaps a battle between ironclads. In contrast our book {[url=http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XGHOEK4JT&isbn=0842029613&itm=7]Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War Mark Thornton, Steven E. Woodworth (Editor), Robert B. Ekelund[/url]features a painting by Edgar Degas entitled the "Cotton Exchange" which depicts several calm businessmen and clerks, some of them Degas’s relatives, going about the business of buying and selling cotton at the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The focus of this book is thus on the economic rationality of seemingly senseless events of the Civil War – a critical period in American history.
What caused the war? Why did the Union defeat the Confederacy? What were the consequences of the War? The premise of the book is that historians have a comparative advantage in describing such events, but economists have the tools to help explain these events.
We use traditional economic analysis, some of it of the Austrian and Public Choice variety, to address these principal questions and our conclusions generally run counter to the interpretations of historians. In contrast to historians who emphasize the land war and military strategy, we show that the most important battle took place at sea. One side, the blockade runners, did not wear uniforms or fire weapons at their opponents. The other side, the blockading fleet, was composed of sailors who had weapons and guns but they rarely fired their cannons in hopes of damaging their opponents. Their pay was based on the valued of captured ships. Historians often have argued that the Confederacy lost because it was overly reluctant to use government power and economic controls, but we show the exact opposite. Big Confederate government brought the Confederacy to its knees.
Some now teach that slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War – an explanation that historians have developed in the twentieth century. However, this analysis does not explain why the war started in 1861 (rather than 1851 or 1841) and it fails to explain why slavery was abolished elsewhere without such horrendous carnage.
We emphasize economics and politics as major factors leading to war. The Republicans who came to power in 1860 supported a mercantilist economic agenda of protectionism, inflation, public works, and big government. High tariffs would have been a boon to manufacturing and mining in the north, but would have been paid largely by those in the export-oriented agriculture economy.
Southern economic interests understood the effects of these policies and decided to leave the union. The war was clearly related to slavery, but mainly in the sense that Republican tariffs would have squeezed the profitability out of the slave-based cotton plantation economy to the benefit of Northern industry (especially Yankee textiles and iron manufacturing). Southerners would also have lost out in terms of public works projects, government land giveaways, and inflation.
The real truth about wars is that they are not started over principle, but over power. Wars however, are not won by power on the battlefield, but by the workings and incentives of men who go to work in fields and factories, to those who transport, store and sell consumer goods, and most especially to the entrepreneurs and middlemen who make markets work and adapt to change. This emphasis and this economic account of tariffs, blockade and inflation, like the focus of Degas’s "Cotton Exchange" reveals the most important and least understood aspect of war.
No, the lower court (say 2nd Circuit) determines the constitutionality of a law within its own territorial jurisdiction. Such never becomes accepted as the opinion of the Supreme Court by denial of cert. If a court from another jurisdiction (say 9th Circuit) rules differently, the Supreme Court may decide to rule on the issue and resolve it.
When a lower court decision is not appealed to the Supreme Court, or cert is not granted, the lower court decision remains the precedent for that territorial jurisdiction but is not binding as precedent on any other jurisdiction as is a Supreme Court decision.
You would be wrong.
It was the official, legal opinion of the Circuit court in question, and until appealed, is the "law of the land."
No, Merryman was issued by Chief Justice Taney as an in-chambers opinion from the Supreme Court.
My point is that it has jurisdiction over all cases with the EXCEPTION of what Congress says to the contrary. That is a huge exception. It is whatever Congress chooses to say it is. McCardle of Ex Parte McCardle found the distinction particularly relevant.
Do you go to war in support of something that is of doubtful legality?
See post 505 for the text (attributed to Jay incorrectly). It seems that Justice Joseph Story also believed that vested powers could not be delegated. Joined by justices Washington, Livingston, Todd, Duvall, Joseph Story and John Marshall. The lone dissenter was William Johnson.
Can you point me to a source showing that I am wrong?
No offense, but what changed your mind? I have yet to discover any clause that grants the federal government the authority to coerce a state into remaining, no clause that commands the states to remain, no clause that bars them from leaving.
Madison called for the unveiling of the right of secession when abandoning the Articles. The Articles used the word "perpetual" not once, but 5 times, yet the Constitution abandoned that concept.
Three states - New York, Virginia and Rhode Island & Providence Plantations - explicitly reserved the right to resume the powers of self-government at their pleasure in their ratifications. There is no clause that consolidates the states into a single mass of people, no clause that demands a state appeal to the government for permission.
I believe the Constitution's omission of the word "perpetual" was quite deliberate, and thus significant. After all, the very acts of drafting and then ratifying the Constitution constituted a defiance of the Articles' supposed perpetuity. (The Articles only allowed themselves to be amended by a unanimity of states.)
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