State sovereignty

“ It has been shown that, in becoming parts of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered many of their essential parts of sovereignty. The right to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exercise exclusive judicial and legislative powers, were all functions of sovereign power. ”

“ The honorable gentleman has said truly, that there can be no subordinate sovereignty. Now, if there cannot, my position is, that the sovereignty resides in the people; they have not parted with it; they have only dispensed such portions of power as were conceived necessary for the public welfare. This Constitution stands upon this broad principle. I know very well, sir, that the people have hitherto been shut out of the federal government; but it is not meant that they should any longer be dispossessed of their rights. ”

“ In the teeth of the facts, our early history presents a great variety of assertions of State independence by leading men, State Legislatures, or State constitutions, which still form the basis of the argument for State sovereignty. The State constitutions declared the State to be sovereign and independent, even though the framers knew that the existence of the State depended on the issue of the national struggle against the mother country. ”

“ But sovereignty, it has been shown, is not in the government, but in the state, and the state is inseparable from the public domain. The people organized and held by the domain or national territory, are under God the sovereign nation, and remain so as long as the nation subsists without subjection to another. The government, as distinguished from the state or nation, has only a delegated authority, governs only by a commission from the nation. ”

“ It is never easy to point out in our complex modern governments the exact organs in which sovereignty is lodged. On the whole, however, it is always safe to ascribe sovereignty to the highest91 originative or law-making body of the state,—the body by whose determinations both the tasks to be carried out by the Administration and the rules to be applied by the courts are fixed and warranted. ”

“ To the extent of the power given, the government may be sovereign, and its acts may be deemed the sovereign acts of the state. Nay, the state, by which we mean the people composing the state, may divide its sovereign powers among various functionaries, and each, in the limited sense, would be sovereign in respect to the powers confided to each, and dependent in all other cases. Strictly speaking, in our republican forms of government, the absolute sovereignty of the nation is in the people of the nation ”

“ But the Union is formed by the surrender by each of the States of its individual sovereignty, and each State by its admission into the Union surrenders its individual sovereignty, or binds itself by a constitutional compact to merge its individual sovereignty in that of the whole. ”

“ The circumstance that the powers of the sovereignty are, in this country, between the national and state governments, does not afford the distinction required. It does not follow from this that each of the portions of power, delegated to the one or the other, is not sovereign with regard to its proper objects. ”

“ In discussing constitutional questions, then, we lay down these axioms:—That in relation to the territories, the powers of Congress are supreme and exclusive; that in relation to the States, they are specifically defined and limited by the constitution—and that we have no right to exercise, within the limits of a State, any power as resulting from the general rights of sovereignty; because that sovereignty belongs to the States and to the people, and not to the Federal Government. ”

“ Under this system, the sovereignty is not in the possession of the governments, therefore it cannot be transferred from them to the general government; so that in no point of view of this definition can we discover that it applies to the present system.
In the exercise of its powers will be insured the exercise of their powers to the state governments; it will insure peace and stability to them; their strength will increase with its strength; their growth will extend with its growth. ”

“ The second great compromise of the American constitution consists in the series of arrangements by which sovereignty is divided between the states and the federal government. In all domestic legislation and jurisdiction, civil and criminal, in all matters relating to tenure of property, marriage and divorce, the fulfilment of contracts and the punishment of malefactors, each separate state is as completely a sovereign state as France or Great Britain. In speaking to a British audience a concrete illustration may not be superfluous. ”

“ History shows that states forming unions of the second class are certain in after time to deny or assert that the sovereignty of the state is one of the rights reserved, according as the state belongs to a stronger or weaker section or faction; state sovereignty being the defence of the weaker state or faction, and being denied by the stronger group of states which controls the government and which asserts that a new sovereign state was created by a union of the former independent ones. ”

“ The Confederation, in my opinion, should give Congress complete sovereignty; except as to that part of internal police, which relates to the rights of property and life among individuals, and to raising money by internal taxes. It is necessary that every thing belonging to this, should be regulated by the State legislatures. Congress should have complete sovereignty in all that relates to war, peace, trade, finance ”

“ The constitution of the United States is the 'supreme law,' and obligatory as such; but a law is not sovereignty, but an act of sovereignty. All laws imply lawmakers; and, in this case, those who framed and ratified this 'supreme law' were those sovereignties called the states, each acting exclusively for itself, uncontrolled by any sister state, except by the moral force of its influence and example. ”

“ Each State in the Union has its own Governor, House of Representatives, Senate, and Judiciary, and is in every respect a sovereign State—they like the word as much as they pretend to dislike the reality—acting perfectly independently within its limits, except in such cases as were mutually agreed upon by the terms of the Union, and to some of which we shall refer by and by. This sovereignty of individual States renders the elective franchise different in different States. ”

“ Now it is very apparent to your Committee, that the power to admit States, created in territories, beyond the limits of the old United States is one of the most critical and important, whether we consider its nature, or its consequences. It is, in truth, nothing less than the power to create in foreign countries, new political sovereignties, and to divest the old United States of a proportion of their political sovereignty, in favor of such foreigner. ”

“ Now if a Federal State is recognised as a State of its own, side by side with its member-States, it is evident that sovereignty must be divided between the Federal State on the one hand, and, on the other, the member-States. ”

“ Each State is a complete sovereignty within the sphere of its reserved powers. The Government of the Union, acting within the sphere of its delegated authority, is also a complete sovereignty. While the General Government should abstain from the exercise of authority not clearly delegated to it, the States should be equally careful that in the maintenance of their rights they do not overstep the limits of powers reserved to them. ”

“ The states are, unquestionably, sovereign, so far as their sovereignty is not affected by this supreme law. But the state legislatures, as political bodies, however sovereign, are yet not sovereign over the people.... ”

“ Certainly, the mere fact that, in particular cases, it is authorized to act directly on the people, does not disprove its federative character, since that very sovereignty in the States, which a confederation implies, includes within it the right of the State to subject its own citizens to the action of the common authority of the confederated States, in any form which may seem proper to itself. ”

“ In a State having a constitution of the one sort we shall expect to find a court or other independent representative of the sovereign power from which the Constitution was derived, which shall protect it from encroachments on the part of the ordinary law-making power; in a State of the other sort, we shall look to see the governing authority of the State unfettered by any external authority—itself the supreme representative of the sovereignty of the State. ”

“ The constitutional power of the federal government to construct or promote works of internal improvement presents itself in two points of view—the first, as bearing upon the sovereignty of the states within whose limits their execution is contemplated, if jurisdiction of the territory which they may occupy be claimed as necessary to then preservation and use ”

“ But no ordinary citizen of the United States probably ever thought of sovereignty except as residing either in the government of his state or in the federal government consisting of congress and president, or sometimes in one way, sometimes in the other. ”

“ This Government was made upon the great basis of the sovereignty of the States, the right of each State to regulate its own domestic institutions to suit itself, and that right was conferred with the understanding and expectation that inasmuch as each locality had separate interests, each locality must have different and distinct local and domestic institutions, corresponding to its wants and interests. ”

“ By this clause of the federal constitution, the sovereignty of the 'people' of each state is clearly reserved, and especially their own exclusive sovereign right to form in all its entirety their own state constitution. ”

“ The argument assumes that the States were originally each in its individuality a sovereign state, but by the convention which framed the constitution, each surrendered its sovereignty to the whole, and thus several sovereign states became one sovereign political people, governing in general matters through the General government, and in particular matters through particular or State governments. ”

“ The organic act of the territory, deriving its validity from the power of congress to admit new states, must contain no provision or restriction which would destroy or impair the equality of the proposed state with the original states, or impose any limitation upon its sovereignty which the constitution has not placed on all the states. ”

“ The State and Its Sovereignty.—The various economic and social functions that are exercised by the people as a nation can be performed in an orderly and effective way only when the people are organized politically, and the nation has full powers of sovereignty. When the nation functions politically it is a state. States may be large like Russia, or small like Montenegro; they may have full sovereignty like Great Britain, or limited sovereignty like New York; the fact that they exercise political authority makes them states. ”

“ It is consonant with the second article in the present Confederation, that each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled. I have long considered the watchfulness of the people over the conduct of their rulers the strongest guard against the encroachments of power ”

“ By the constitution, as is now well settled, the United States, having rightfully acquired the territories, and being the only government which can impose laws upon them, have the entire dominion and sovereignty, national and municipal, federal and state, over all the territories, so long as they remain in a territorial condition. ”

“ A new State, springing into existence, does not require the recognition of other States to confirm its internal sovereignty. The existence of the State de facto is sufficient, in this respect, to establish its sovereignty de jure. It is a State because it exists. ”

“ The American revolution broke out, and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured in the townships and municipalities, took possession of the State: every class was enlisted in its cause; battles were fought, and victories obtained for it, until it became the law of laws. ”