One of the major issues on the British political agenda while I have been in the UK this week giving talks about Democracy and Political Ignorance is the prospect that Scotland might become an independent nation separate from the United Kingdom. A referendum on independence is scheduled for September 2014. A recent poll shows the […]
Archive | Secession
A Market for State Borders
By Eugene Kontorovich on October 17, 2013 7:39 am in Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Federalism, Legal Scholarship, Secession
Following up on my earlier post on parts of a state seceding to join another state, I’d like to call attention to a neat article by Joseph Blocher, coming out in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, entitled “Selling State Borders.” It suggests such political redrawing can be accomplished through sales between states, and shows […]
How Best to Secede from a State
By Eugene Kontorovich on October 11, 2013 5:52 am in Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, Elections, Federalism, Originalism, Secession, Uncategorized
Some spirit of secession has spread across the land, with various areas in Maryland, Colorado, Texas, California and elsewhere discussing seceding from their states, because of political alienation arising from significant differences in values and preferences. I don’t take the political prospects of American secession movements too seriously, and assume their principal purpose is to […]
The Rise of Movements Seeking to Create New States Through Secession
Over the last week, secession movements seeking to create new states have made some progress in northern California and rural Colorado. Back in 2011, I wrote about the secession movement in southern California. All three movements are examples of rural jurisdictions seeking to secede from state governments they perceive as dominated by urban interests and […]
Slavery and Secession – The Documentary Evidence
Just a quick addendum to Ilya’s posts here and here about libertarianism, the Confederacy and the Civil War. I know it’s fashionable in some circles to argue that the Confederate states did not seceded in order to defend slavery. I’ve heard the arguments about tariffs and all that. In my mind, the most compelling counter-argument […]
John Stuart Mill on Slavery, the Confederacy, and the American Civil War
A reader reminded me that many of the same defenses of the Confederacy advanced by its modern apologists (including some of the libertarian ones discussed in my last post) were also advocated by wartime British sympathizers with the Confederates, and effectively rebutted by John Stuart Mill in his 1862 essay, “The Contest in America.” I […]
Libertarianism, the Confederacy, and the Civil War Revisited
By Ilya Somin on July 16, 2013 8:34 pm in Civil War, History, Libertarianism, Racial Discrimination, Secession
Revelations that Rand Paul aide Jack Hunter has a history of racist and pro-Confederate statements during his days as a radio shock jock have rekindled the longstanding debate over libertarian attitudes towards the Civil War. Hunter has repudiated many of his former statements and attitudes. But that hasn’t stopped the controversy from continuing. This uproar […]
The 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg
Today is the 150th anniversary of Pickett’s Charge and the last day of the Battle Gettysburg. Many modern historians take issue with the traditional view that this Union victory was the decisive battle of the Civil War. They point out that the Confederacy still had a chance to win by demoralizing northern public opinion during […]
Homage to Catalonia
By Eugene Kontorovich on November 26, 2012 12:50 am in Constitutional Law, International Law, Israel, Politics, Secession, Uncategorized
Voters in the Spanish province of Catalonia yesterday gave a large majority to pro-independence parties, who now command 2/3 of the seats in the regional parliament. The practical impact may be attenuated, because the secessionist movement is weakened by being spread across four parties: separatists can’t unite. Madrid vows to resist any split. Spain apparently […]
Public Opinion on Secession
A recent Huffington Post poll shows that some 22% would “strongly support” (12%) or “tend to support” (10%) their state’s secession from the union (complete results here). This result, combined with recent petitions for secession sent to the White House by citizens of Texas and other states, has led to considerable alarmist discussion of the […]
The Rise of Secessionism in Catalonia
Time has an interesting recent article highlighting the rise of secessionism in Catalonia. Many more Catalans than in the past want to secede from Spain because of the way the central government takes far more money out of the province than it puts back in: Sept. 11 always brings Barcelonans into the streets to dance […]
Would the North be Better Off Without the South?
The New York Times has a review of a recent book by travel writer Chuck Thompson which argues that the rest of the country would be better off if the South seceded. In the nineteenth century, the main advocates of secession were southern supporters of slavery, though a few northerners flirted with the idea too. […]
Debating the Moral and Legal Status of Secession
Jason Kuznicki and Timothy Sandefur have written responses to my post critiquing Kuznicki’s earlier statement that the idea of legal secession is a “category error.” Kuznicki writes: Of course, it’s indisputably true that some secessions are authorized by some countries’ constitutions. Others, however, are not. Within these two types of cases, authorized and unauthorized, we […]
Is Legal Secession a “Category Error”?
As part of the ongoing discussion of libertarian views on the Civil War and secession, Jason Kuznicki of Cato and David Drumm of the Jonathan Turley blog have argued, in Kuznicki’s words, that “[s]ecession is the decision to step out of an existing political order, so it’s a category error to try to justify it […]
Libertarianism and the Civil War
By Ilya Somin on March 6, 2012 12:55 am in Civil War, Federalism, History, Libertarianism, Racism, Secession
Over at Libertarianism.Org, Jonathan Blanks has an interesting series of posts criticizing libertarians who defend the secession of the Southern states that precipitated the civil war (see here and here). Like Blanks, I believe that any possible justification that the Confederates may have had was negated by the fact that they seceded for the purpose […]