If you have something proving the states can lawfully secede, I would love to see it. I will move to the first state that secedes in a heartbeat.
During the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania outlined “the distinction between a federal and a national supreme government; the former being a mere compact resting on the good faith of the parties, the latter having a complete and compulsive operation.” If the Constitution established a federal government, and it did, then the Constitution did not have a “compulsive operation.” In essence, the people of the states in convention could either interpose their sovereignty to arrest the acts of the general government or withdraw from the Union. Morris, a nationalist, recognized that the states still held sway when he suggested that the Constitution be voted on by state and that the states, not a consolidated people, had to ratify the document. The Constitution as ratified in 1787 and 1788 is “a mere compact resting on the good faith of the parties.” That compact can be unilaterally broken at any point by the same people of the States which ratified it.
Neither the Framers nor the ratifiers believed that the Constitution created a “consolidated nation” as Story suggested. It was argued in all state ratifying conventions that the opposite was true. The Union was made “more perfect” but never consolidated. The States still had all powers not delegated to the general government, as the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution clearly illustrates, and every State proposed a “Tenth Amendment” in their suggested bill of rights in the months after ratification. John C. Calhoun wrote that, “I maintain that sovereignty is in its nature indivisible. It is the supreme power in a state, and we might just as well speak of half a square, or half a triangle, as of half a sovereignty.” In other words, delegated powers were still retained by the people of the States at large for their exercise if they chose to rescind that delegation. Sovereignty can never be divided or surrendered in part. If the states had it in 1776 as Jefferson wrote, then they maintain that sovereignty to this day and thus can exercise that sovereignty through an act of interposition or withdraw.
To whit and to boot there are still four commonwealths in this union (although most of those populaces know not that they live in one that reserve the right of their state and its power from the people).
I wouldn’t rest my laurels on anything from SCOTUS as of recent (i.e., the last several decades), they have gotten LOTS wrong along the way.
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I need to read up on the history on the nation states of Italy. If US states could turn their backs on federal rule, secede and declare independence, would any states or conglomerate of states hold up against the federal juggernaut?
Texas could probably secede by itself but would be stronger as a coalition of states like with a southern border states coalition since border states have unique issues of border problems.
Would something like that even work? States throwing off tyranny and going non-federal?
Or, after this silent coup, would the federal "pen and phone" crush any resistance? I feel like the underground/resistance in the Star Wars movies....