NewKid..Re: What is "supreme Law"?


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Posted by KatNip on September 23, 1998 at 15:52:51:

In Reply to: Re: What is "supreme Law"? posted by New Kid on September 23, 1998 at 03:56:46:

Your follow up post is appreciated but left me puzzled as to exactly what "U.S. Constitution Article 1 Section 10" had to to with said Treaty of Peace (1783). Please elaborate if possible...thanks!

As you may or may not know the US Const. is simply a REVISION of the Articles of Confederation.

“Our constitutions are comparable [. . .] to the charters of great corporations, our statutes to their by-laws, our treaties to their contracts [and] the chief object of the Union and of the REVISION [my emphasis] of the Articles of Confederation which gave us our present federal Constitution was undoubtedly commercial regulation.” Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States (Columbia University Press, 1909, reprint 1961), p. 147.

The acquisition of foreign territory. The right of the United States to acquire foreign territory by any of the modes recognized by the law of nations was one not free from difficulty, and not expressly provided for by the provisions of the national constitution. American Law and Procedure, 14 vols. (LaSalle Extension University, 1920), vol. 13, p. 309.

Judge Story, in his Commentaries, says: “There is no pretense that the purchase or cession of any foreign territory is within any of the powers expressly enumerated in the constitution. It is nowhere in that instrument said that congress, or any other department of the national government, shall have a right to purchase or accept of any cession of foreign territory. The power itself (it has been said) could scarcely have been in the contemplation of the framers of it. It is, in its own nature, as dangerous to liberty, as susceptible of abuse in its actual application, and as likely as any which could be imagined to lead to a dissolution of the Union. If congress have the power, it may unite any territory whatsoever to our own, however distant, however populous, and however powerful.” American Law and Procedure, 14 vols. (LaSalle Extension University, 1920), vol. 13, p. 317.

“The Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional in the opinion of the President [Jefferson] who accomplished it.” Edward S. Corwin, “The Constitution as Instrument and as Symbol*,” 30 The American Political Science Review, No. 6, 1071, 1077-1078 (December, 1936). *A paper delivered at the Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, September, 1936. (Author’s italics.)

Louisiana Treaty. “Mr. Elliot: The Constitution is silent on the subject of the acquisition of territory; therefore the treaty is unconstitutional. . . .” Acquisition of Louisiana, Louisiana Treaty, House of Representatives, October 25, 1803. See Elliot’s Debates, 4:448.

Louisiana Treaty. “Mr. Tracy. . . . We can hold territory; but to admit the inhabitants into the Union, to make citizens of them, and states, by treaty, we cannot constitutionally do, and no subsequent act of legislation, or even ordinary amenmdent to our Constitution, can legalize it.” Acquisition of Louisiana, Louisiana Treaty, House of Representatives, October 25, 1803. See Elliot’s Debates, 4:448-449.

‘Another question of interest and importance was with regard to the admission of new states. It will be remembered that Gouverneur Morris had favored the admission of new states into the union under such limitations as would leave the control of federal matters in the hands of the Atlantic states. Either on their own responsibility or because they interpreted the views of the convention that way, the committee of detail inserted a provision that new states should “be adimitted on the same terms with the original states.” When it came up for consideration Morris protested against this provision, and he made his objection on the same ground as his previous opposition: “He did not wish to bind down the legislature to admit Western States on the terms here stated . . . [He] did not mean to discourage the growth of the western country. . . . He did not wish, however, to throw the power into their hands.” Such men as Madison, Mason, and Sherman opposed him, but Morris succeeded in getting the objectionable clause stricken out, and then without a dissenting voice the convention agreed to his substitute: “New States may be admitted by the Legislature into the Union.” This phraseology is apparently so artless that it might well obtain the unanimous support of the convention, but in view of its origin and authorship it acquires great significance. How great this is one hardly realizes until Morris’s own interpretation of the clause is considered. Sixteen years laters, at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, in a letter to Henry W. Livingston, he wrote: “Your inquiry . . . is substantially whether the Congress can admit, as a new State, territory, which did not belong to the United States when the Constitution was made. In my opinion they can not.
“I always thought that, when we should acquire Canada and Louisiana it would be proper to govern them as provinces, and allow them no voice in our councils. In wording the third section of the fourth article, I went as far as circumstances would permit to establish the exclusion. Candor obliges me to add my belief, that, had it been more pointedly expressed, a strong opposition would have been made.”’ Max Farrand, The Framing of the Constitution of the United States (Yale University Press, 1913), pp. 143-144.

‘True, the Constitution provided for the admission of New States into the Union, but this, as I have shown, and shall hereafter demonstrate, was a provision peculiarly pointing to the original National and State domain, and limited precisely to Territory within the then precincts of the National Sovereignty. True, Congress had power, under the Constitution, “to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the Territory, or other property, belonging to the United States.” But this again, was within the limits specified, for it certainly could not refer to Territory not then belonging to the United States.’ Henry Sherman, Slavery in the United States (Hurlburt & Pond, Publ., 1860), p. 49.

btw...an informative read--> Henry Sherman, Slavery in the United States (Hurlburt & Pond, Publ., 1860).


: : US Const. gives NO authority to admit NEW states
: : into the Union not within the original territory
: : set by the Treaty of Peace.

: U.S. Constitution Article 1 Section 10:

: No state shall, without the Consent of Congress...enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power,...




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