Greg Olear - Texas Hold 'Em: Lone Star Secession

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Greg Olear 🇺🇦
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"'The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement,' is exactly what the GOP now wants—in Texas, and everywhere. The six rightwing radicals on the Supreme Court want it, too. These despotic forces must not prevail."

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Texas Hold 'Em: Lone Star Secession
The Supreme Court ruled that a state may not leave the Union. But can a former sovereign nation be de-annexed?
9:07 AM · Jun 21, 2022

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/texas-hold-em-lone-star-secession

Can a state leave the Union?

Once part of “these United States,” is it lawful for South Carolina or Mississippi or California to renounce statehood and bail? Are the states members of the country by choice? Or is America like the Mafia, and once you’re in, you’re in?

Jefferson Davis—“perhaps the best informed, probably the best educated, and certainly the most intellectual man in the Senate,” in the words of Civil War historian Shelby Foote—believed that States’ Rights extended to secession from the Union, and to avoid war, he wanted the Supreme Court to decide the matter, once and for all. But that didn’t happen. At least, not right away.

The question of secession—of disunion—was litigated on the battlefield starting in 1861, but not in the courts until eight years later. In Texas v. White, a case about U.S. bonds, the Supreme Court ruled that, even though Texas quit the Union and joined the Confederacy, as far as the law was concerned, it had remained a state the entire time. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, writing for the majority, explains this Schrödinger’s cat rationale, in which Texas both is and is not a state, simultaneously:

The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to “be perpetual.” And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained “to form a more perfect Union.” It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?

When, therefore, 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. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.

[Autumn]

1. They have already prevailed. Who is going to stop them?

No one will.