From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jun 14 2003 - 21:45:58 MDT
--- "Michael M. Butler" <mmb@xocolatl.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jun 2003 21:08:50 -0700 (PDT), Robert J. Bradbury
> <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Paul Grant wrote:
> >
> >> You mean like the US federal government chose not to acknowledge
> >> the southern states right to succede? How is that any different?
> >
> > Now this raises an interesting question in my mind. Does anyone
> > know if there is a "proper" process for U.S. states to succede?
>
> I believe it'd take an act of Congress.
>
> And I'd expect a constitutional challenge to be brought by someone
> (possibly a citizen of the state in question) who didn't like that,
> and an injunction at the Federal level to be issued until the whole
> thing got wrangled out.
>
> I think Texas has reserved the power to fragment into several
> separate states of the Union, but that's a separate mater. So to
> speak.
NH retains the right to seceed, as well as to launch new revolution, in
its state constitution, which predates the US constitution (we were the
first to declare independence and the first state to have a
constitution). Ours is the last to retain such features.
While states that were formed from territories and formally annexed
would have to get acts of congress to de-annex (they would also have to
remove provisions from their state constitutions that declare them to
recognise the imminent power of the US constitution and government),
states that were original ratifiers were never annexed, since we were
founding members (NH, for example, was the 9th ratifier and thus is
responsible for the US Constitution being 'active') since you can't
'annex' yourself to yourself. The original states (the 13 colonies and
Vermont) were all independent countries (as was Texas) prior to joining
the US, though unlike Texas, they were never annexed.
Furthermore, there are other situations. Part of northern NH was once
an independent country, the Republic of Indian Stream, up into the
1830's, when Britain and the US finally resolved vagaries resulting
from poor surveying used in the Treaty of Paris.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
Pro-tech freedom discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
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