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A Concurring Opinion for Secession, Part 1 & 2

Timothy Baldwin / Liberty Defense League:
One of my most highly esteemed colleagues, Edwin Vieira, wrote a recent article entitled, "A Dissenting Opinion On 'Secession'," to which I feel compelled to respond, for a couple of reasons: (1) many people (including me) highly respect Vieira's opinion and analysis, as he has proven himself to be an extremely intelligent person and favorable to the cause of freedom; and (2) the matter of freedom is too crucial not to be publically debated. Truth being the ultimate objective, I claim the same liberty as Emer De Vattel in his renowned exposition, The Law of Nations: "My pen lies under no restraint, and I am incapable of prostituting it to flattery. I was born in a country of which liberty is the soul, the treasure, and the fundamental law." Emer De Vattel, The Law of Nations, (Indianapolis, IN, Liberty Fund, 2008), 20.

A Concurring Opinion For Secession, Part 2
By Timothy Baldwin / Liberty Defense League:
Anti-Secessionist Argument #1: To secede would cause damage to the other states given their "detrimental reliance" on the other states’ joining the union. In Vieira's first point, he refers to the secessionist' position that the US Constitution is a "contract," thereby giving the state a right to break the contract upon a breach. However, he qualifies this position to say, a contract is no contract where the parties to it can leave it at any time without cause. In other words, where there is no binding effect upon the parties to the agreement, then the agreement has no binding effect other than a "gentlemen's agreement." This renders the "agreement" to be something other than a contract and implicitly is some sort of legal absurdity.

Posted by Editor at February 10, 2010 12:58 AM