by Matt Andersen, 1L Contributor
The ironic part
of signing petitions for secession is that it is all being done through the
White House’s “We the People” website, which was created by the Obama
Administration. Once a petition gains 25,000 signatures, the Administration has
pledged to review the petition and file a formal response.
“What the Constitution says repeatedly is once you’re in (as
a state), you’re in. If people want to
secede, they are allowed to leave; they just can’t take the land and the water
with them. There is a lawful way to secede – it’s called emigration. They can
move to Canada,” Amar wrote.
In the wake of
President Barack Obama’s re-election victory on Nov. 6, nearly 1 million
Americans, from all 50 states, have signed petitions to secede from the United
States of America.
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As of Monday
evening, a petition has been filed from all 50 states. Texas has gained nearly
118,000 signatures, which is the most signatures of any secession petition, and
the most signatures of any open petition on the website. Currently 11 states, including Georgia, Louisiana,
South Carolina, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama,
Florida, Ohio and Texas, have secession petitions that have reached the requisite
number of signatures to gain an official review and response from the Obama
Administration.
Now, for what you have all been waiting for, the legal
analysis: At the culmination of the Civil War, the
United States Supreme Court decided Texas
v. White, which started as a dispute over bonds issued in Texas during the
war. Texas attempted to leave the United States when it supported the Confederacy,
where it supplied troops to fight with the rebel forces. The United States
Supreme Court established a new constitutional principle in Texas v. White, holding that states cannot
unilaterally secede.
Chief Justice Salmon
P. Chase stated: “When Texas became one of the United States, she entered into
an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the
guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the
state. The Act, which consummated her admission into the Union, was something
more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the
political body. And it was final.”
If it doesn’t
seem hard enough to secede, some constitutional scholars say that secession
could be considered treason under the Articles of the Constitution. In an article
for the Kansas City Star, Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of
Law and Political Science at Yale University, discussed the Supremacy Clause in
Article 6 of the United States Constitution.
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This is not the
first time Americans have tried to secede from the United States, and it most
likely will not be the last. One is left to wonder whether the publicity that
this issue has received has a direct connection with the increasing number of
social media users and American citizens’ increasing urge to express political
angst on the Internet.
Share your
thoughts on seceding from old Red, White and Blue with us at @JurisDuqLaw
or on our Facebook
page.
