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Fact check: What legal mechanisms exist for US states to secede from the Union?
1. Summary of the results
Based on the provided analyses, there are no legal mechanisms for US states to unilaterally secede from the Union. This was definitively established by the Supreme Court case Texas v. White in 1869, which ruled that states enter an "indissoluble relation" when joining the Union [1]. The only theoretical pathways for secession would be through:
- Revolution
- Consent of all other states through Congress [2]
- Individual emigration (moving to another country without the land) [3]
2. Missing context/alternative viewpoints
Several important historical precedents and legal interpretations provide crucial context:
- President Andrew Jackson's 1832 Proclamation explicitly rejected secession as a constitutional right during the conflict with South Carolina [4]
- The concept of secession was considered an "almost fatal assertion of State power against the Union" [5]
- Legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar suggests that attempts at secession could be considered treason under the Constitution [3]
- The constitutional legitimacy of secession remains a complex historical question, even though there is no legal pathway [5]
3. Potential misinformation/bias in the original statement
The question itself contains an implicit assumption that legal mechanisms for secession might exist, which could be misleading. Several groups might benefit from promoting different narratives around secession:
- States' Rights Advocates: Benefit from promoting the idea that states maintain sovereign rights, including the right to secede, as historically argued by South Carolina [4]
- Federal Government: Benefits from maintaining the Supreme Court's interpretation of an "indestructible union" [2]
- Constitutional Scholars: Maintain influence by interpreting the complex historical and legal questions surrounding secession [5]
The Supreme Court's ruling in Texas v. White remains the definitive legal precedent, consistently cited across multiple sources [1] [3] [2], making any contrary claims about legal secession mechanisms questionable.