The Curious Lawyer: Secession, is it Constitutional?

• Is Secession constitutional?
• What does the Constitution say? Articles and 10th and 14th amendments.
• What has SCOTUS said? Post-Civil War case of Texas v. White; and Alaska Supreme Court in 2000.
• Arguments on each side.
• Erwin Chemerinsky's book No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States (2024) & Cynthia Nicoletti’s book Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis (2017)
• Did the Hawaii Supreme Court fire an opening Court-based secession shot? (Ironically in a Second Amendment case!)

Can a state secede? It is unconstitutional? The answer is not as crystal clear as you may think. In this program, Peter Afrasiabi takes you on a fun, interesting journey asking these questions: What does the Constitution say about secession? What does it implicitly say? How do the tenth and fourteenth amendments impact the analysis? What is the scope of the Supreme Court’s post-Civil War opinion on this question? By looking at these questions and some of the data about growing secession movements form California to Texas, as well as some famed legal scholars works on the question, this program gives you all the legal arguments for and against the question of the constitutionality of secession.

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