Hacker News Reader

Comment by wtbob | Hacker News Reader

> Actually, I think that a great deal of America's success is because member states are NOT free to leave.

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads, 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.'

No Article nor Amendment of the Constitution delegates authority over secession to the United States, and thus that power is retained by the several States, or to the people thereof. Thus it's pretty obvious that member states are free to leave any time they choose; it's the only reading of the supreme law of the land which makes any sense.

View on HN

Thus it's pretty obvious that member states are free to leave any time they choose

On this subject the late, great Antonin Scalia supposedly said, more or less: "we settled that issue 150 years ago".

it's the only reading of the supreme law of the land which makes any sense

Much to the frequent lament of Scalia, the supreme law of the land is no more and no less than what a majority of the Supreme Court chooses to believe at that particular time.

> Much to the frequent lament of Scalia, the supreme law of the land is no more and no less than what a majority of the Supreme Court chooses to believe at that particular time.

Unfortunately that's true (and Justice Scalia was complicit in that: when he was right, he was typically really right, but when he was wrong he was rally wrong); that's why I've always respected Justice Thomas, who really does seem to attempt to consider what the Constitution actually says, requires and is silent on.

The one saving grace is that the Supreme Court is not, despite what folks think, a super-legislature: it only has the power to rule in specific cases. There's nothing which prevents litigants bringing a similar case as one already decided, and the Court is free to ignore a previous, erroneous ruling. So there is some little hope that with the right justices it might ignore bad precedent.

And yet the one time they tried, they were stopped by force. De facto, not necessarily de jury.

Ah, but what if South Carolina hadn't been so stupid as to shell Fort Sumter? That was the actual start of the war, and was a perfectly legitimate casus belli for the United States.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com