| mjk45 said: Having talked about secession being unlawful is that really the case today legally? , In Lincon's case didn't he threaten to imprison the head of the supreme court for alluding to the fact that it may not be unlawful at all . , so has the constitution been amended since , or was the head of the supreme court wrong or is it still going along on the fact that Lincon disallowed any legal challenge . |
As far as I know, the federal government's position is still very much that it is illegal to secede. Far too many historians parrot the line that I mentioned earlier: that the Civil War settled the matter once and for all because the North won. Which is neither a legal nor a moral argument, since once can also say that Stalin was in his right to starve a bunch of Ukranians because he did it, and that settles that. So ultimately, I think it's more of an extralegal matter than a legal one as secession - like war - represents a breakdown of the political. A region which secedes and can enforce its independence will remain independent; a region which can't will be forced back into the union at gunpoint.
