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Since you stubbornly refuse to understand my position, although I’ve explained it several times, let me use your analogy. Do I think that the southern political leadership decided on their course of action knowing that it was illegal? No. But that does not change the fact that the Supreme Court later determined that they were wrong in their belief that unilateral secession was legal. It is not and it was not when the south took their action. The fact that the determination was made in 1869 means nothing because that is what happens in the appeals process. Scott v. Sandford, the famous Dred Scott decision, was heard by the Supreme Court 10 years after the facts of the case occurred. That doesn’t mean that Dred Scott entered into the process knowing he was in the wrong. But it does mean that in view of the court his actions were not legal. That doesn’t mean that the court is running wild creating ex post facto law, either. The court is not creating law, it is ruling on the validity of laws others have created.

I have no doubt that the southern leaders were convinced that they were in the right and unilateral secession was legal. It turns out that they were wrong. That doesn’t mean that they were committing some criminal conspiracy by their actions. It just means that they were wrong. Secession as practiced by Texas and the other southern states was not legal when they did it, it was not legal in 1869, and it is not legal now.

"Do I think that the southern political leadership decided on their course of action knowing that it was illegal?"

You keep avoiding the question by altering it. I did not ask if they thought that their action was illegal, I asked if a jurist, expert in the Constitution and Constitutional law, could have anticipated or predicted the Texas v. White decision. That is a different question. Your position seems to be that, in Constitutional law, alone among all areas of human experience, a contingent act can affect the past - i.e. a legal standing in the past.

But that does not change the fact that the Supreme Court later determined that they were wrong in their belief that unilateral secession was legal.

Care to answer a simple question?

“Is the court supreme over the constitution, or the constitution supreme over the court?”

Your refusal to answer is really quite amusing. Our Friend Walt refuses to discuss the secession of the ratifying States from the union formed under the Articles of Confederation, and he refuses to discuss the high court’s response to the “palpably unconstitutional” Alien & Sedition Acts as well. You refuse to answer this simple question, and those John Taylor posed with it:

The word supreme is used twice in the constitution, once in reference to the superiority of the highest federal court over the inferior federal courts, and again in declaring "that the constitution, and laws made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby." Did it mean to create two supremacies, one in the court, and another in the constitution? Are they colateral, or is one superior to the other? Is the court supreme over the constitution, or the constitution supreme over the court? Are "the judges in every state" to obey the articles of the union, or the construction of these articles by the supreme federal court?

Yes – quite amusing!

;>)