Iraq election (one day after): Who is counting the votes?

[Scarberry, Mark]

Sandy also could have mentioned that Article XIII specifically provided that
"the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every
state, and the Union shall be perpetual." So, yes, before ratification of
the Constitution the states already were bound to a sort of Union, without,
it seems, a right of withdrawal. That apparently was a more consensual and
thus more politically legitimate Union than the union into which the people
of Iraq had been forced -- a union that had been maintained by repressive
minority Sunni governments. So perhaps the argument of Sunnis that Iraq must
be kept whole but that they should have a veto over the constitution is less
persuasive than similar arguments that could have been made by North
Carolinians and Rhode Islanders.

Mark Scarberry
Pepperdine
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Sanford Levinson
To: Scarberry, Mark; conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Sent: 10/16/2005 1:48 PM
Subject: RE: Iraq election (one day after):  Who is counting the votes?

 With regard to Mark's posting:

Our founding allowed each state to choose whether to join the Union,
with the Constitution going into effect after nine states ratified it,
but only with regard to those ratifying states. 
___________________________________

He is, of course, absolutely right.  But it is also obviously true that
Article VII, which allowed this, was in patent violation of Article XIII
of the Articles of Confederation, which required unanimous consent of
the state legislatures.  As Judah Benjamin argued on December 30, 1860,
in his farewell speech to the Senate, the nine states (plus Virginia and
NY) in effect seceeded from the existing Union, leaving Rhode Island and
North Carolina who knows where.  

[snip]

sandy