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To: 4ConservativeJustices
You still don't understand. Nothing prohibits secession, or even sovereign state laws. Unless the Constitution somewhere is delegated the power over secession (or anything else), the US Constitution cannot prohibit secession. Read Hamilton in Federalist 84 for a clue about excersing powers not delegated. He (and other federalists) argued against a Bill of Rights, simply because the federal government had not been delegated the powers over religion, speech, RKBA, individual liberties, civil cases, jury trials, search & seizure &c.

No, it is you who don't understand.  I'm not talking about non-delegated powers - which you keep coming back to.  The delegated powers of the constitution cannot be overthrown by state laws.  Any laws made by a state (including secession ordinances) are subordinate to the constitution.  The individual states could not legally secede because they were still bound by the U.S. Constitution as being the supreme law of the land.  Every state, in their secession ordinances recognized that they had no sovereignty under the Constitution.

They claimed that they could get their sovereignty back because state laws trumped constitutional ones.
885 posted on 06/04/2002 10:34:38 AM PDT by Frumious Bandersnatch
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To: Frumious Bandersnatch
Any laws made by a state (including secession ordinances) are subordinate to the constitution.

ZZZZZZttttt! Wrong! Hamilton from Federalist 32:

The necessity of a concurrent jurisdiction in certain cases results from the division of the sovereign power; and the rule that all authorities, of which the States are not explicitly divested in favor of the Union, remain with them in full vigor, is not a theoretical consequence of that division, but is clearly admitted by the whole tenor of the instrument which contains the articles of the proposed Constitution. We there find that, notwithstanding the affirmative grants of general authorities, there has been the most pointed care in those cases where it was deemed improper that the like authorities should reside in the States, to insert negative clauses prohibiting the exercise of them by the States. The tenth section of the first article consists altogether of such provisions. This circumstance is a clear indication of the sense of the convention, and furnishes a rule of interpretation out of the body of the act, which justifies the position I have advanced and refutes every hypothesis to the contrary.

Dual sovereignty. Mutiple delegations of sovereignty. And to prevent the federal government AND the state from sharing a select few powers, the limitations in Article I, Section 10.

Not complete and utter federal sovereignty. Secession could not be a "like" power, delegated to the federal government and the states - congress did not ratify the Constitution, nor can it rescind it. Au contraire, it remains a state power, as the states are the ratifying agents.

908 posted on 06/04/2002 1:28:55 PM PDT by 4CJ
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