Was it constitutional for Lincoln to invade the South?

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The D.O.I. simply stated the case for independence. What made the former colonies independent was Britain giving up the war to retain the Colonies.

The D.O.I. is not law. It never was law. It was a "motherhood statement". A justification for all the efforts to achieve independence.

The Constitution of 1787 is the supreme law of the land and it replaced the original articles of confederation.

ruveyn

It not that simple - if it come to such questions, you had to look also into the theories regarding the creation and end of the legal entity "Sovereign". What 1776 happened was the birth of an entity. You had also to how the ratification of the Constitution of 1787 happened - it happened via the ratification of nine states. It did not postulated that the other state could leave the union, if they would agree.

What Lincon did was to execute the claim of 1776 established new sovereign, constituted in the People of USA, against rebels. If this rebels would been successful, than the legal situation would have changed (as it did 1776). But they were not and therefore the decision of 1776 still stands.

BTW: You find an similar case in the Sonderbund War in Switzerland, were the legal situation was much more confusing than in the USA, but the war was shorter (3 - 29 Nov. 1847) and less bloody (~150 causalities in total).

Why do you assume so much? I never said Obama would do that, and I never took my stance on the issue. I also never said I hate Obama.

I even have stated that I do not support what the CSA (Confederate States of America, if you didn't know) did, which means that I would have wanted them to be invaded and taken over.

You can even replace Obama with "the president" if you want. The question remains the same. As a matter of fact, I'll just go change it to that now so nobody else like you gets confused.

Is this as relevant as me saying was it right for my white ancestors to steal land away from my cherokee and chippewa native indian ancestors in the last four hundred years or so? or that it was morally wrong that my nordic ancestors raided churches and monestarties along the coast of scotland around a thousand years ago?

What was done is done....

If the American Colonies had the right to secede from Britain, it seems to me that the southern states had the right to secede from the United States.

In this case you do not need to forget that some legal problems were solved on the battlefield. This the "Normative Kraft des Faktischen" (normative/lawmaking power of facts) in action.

I gave above the example of the Swizz Sonderbundwar, but also the Declaration of Independence was a breach of existing British law, but the list is shear endless.

It is not clearly established whether secession from the Union is legal by the Constitution, but the consensus seems to be that it is not. It is also questionable whether or not it is legal to compel states to remain in the Union by force. The 1850s and 1860s were a strange time in many ways, and a huge crisis for American government. Looking at the election of 1860 turns up some startling facts: Lincoln won the Presidency with 39.6% of the vote, and not because the opposition to him was split. Even if all the non-Lincoln votes counted towards one person, Lincoln would have won in the Electoral College as a result of strange vote distributions (voters Southern states voted essentially unanimously against him, but he might win a Northern state by 51%).

The Soviet Constitution explicitly reserved the right of secession for member republics, but in practice they did not permit that to happen until the Gorbachev years. Nations typically do not permit chunks of themselves to leave.

Another interesting question would be to look at the behavior of West Virginia, which was originally just a few counties in Virginia: when Virginia seceded from the Union, West Virginia seceded from Virginia and rejoined the Union. Where do they stand legally?

True, very true. Laws are made by the side that wins.

Sometimes it gets downright crazy, like the idea that the artificial nations of North and South Vietnam were legally obligated to secede from each other.

One of the constituting features of Federal State is generally that the member state do not have the right of secession and are not allow to act with other nations on their account as legal entities of International Law. You find the second rule in Articles of Confederation, so the states already waived away their right of acting as independent states on terms of international law* and therefore ended their existence as Subjects of International Law and therefore had no longer a right of secession. Entering such a union is a one-way-road, except agreed otherwise.

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* The only Federal State I know which allows its members to act a sovereign entities in respect with other states in terms of International Law is the Federal Republic of Germany - Art. 23, 24, and 32 of the Constitution following the tradition of the Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugensis 1648, Art. VIII, § 2.

Why does waiving the right of foreign affairs WHILE a member of the Union has anything to do with WITHDRAWING from the Union?

I always consider Lincon abused the constitution by declaring war in such a manner. And the congressmen from the South were stupid enough not to attend the congress and simply block the bill.

This has to do with idea of the nature of a sovereign in International Law. A sovereign has some attributes one is to make international treaties with other sovereigns. If an entity is legally waived away the right to make such treaties he losses also his formal status of an sovereign. This happened latest with the Articles of Confederation.

So the states were no longer sovereigns and the real sovereign, the "People of the USA" and his institutions (Congress, President, etc.) had therefore all right to impose their rule by all means.

You must recall that giving a constitution which is the "supreme law of the country" (Art, VI US-consitutio) in the first place is an execution of the "Pouvoir constituant originaire" - such an act is reserved to sovereign of (theoretically) unlimited power.

My understanding of International Law is that it's only relevant when resolving issues between countries. It's basically a set of agreements that all countries are expected to abide. So when a sovereign is split, it just become several sovereigns and all are still expected to honor the International Law. That means it is totally irrelevant to this topic.

So the only question is whether the Constitution allows recession. But what is a constitution anyway? Eevery country is free to define their own law and some decide to have a set of supreme law governing the basic framework of the country. Such is the case of The United States of America. When a state is admitted to the union, it agreeded to the Constitution and so it become the supreme law of that state too. The aggrement to the Constitution IS what makes it the supreme law. It's basically just a contract, nothing more.

Unfortunatelly, the Constitution says nothing about recession. It only defined the form of government when a state is still in the union (including the article you quoted, which defines the law and treaties aspect of it). I said Lincon abused the Constitution because he and his supporters view that when something is not granted by the Constitution then it's not allowed. But the spirit of law has always been the opposite. In fact when a power is not specifically assigned to anyone by the Constitution, it belongs to the states!

I used the term "International Law", because the Englisch language does not have a proper term for the French "Droit public" (or "Öffentliches Recht" in German), which describes the relation between subjects and their sovereign (even if the sovereign is a democratic one).



Behind the idea of a constitution are rule and ideas which are common to all countries, because they are based on term agreed in academic discussion of law over the centuries. You can't separate the terms of the US-constitution from this ideas. A constitution is never a contract, because a contract is made within the area French call "droit privé".

In some circumstances a constitution (or constitution-like regulations) it can be established via a treaty. Here we have two different models:

1) A treaty with foreign powers regarding the inner structure of of state: Classical examples the Treaty of Onsabrück or the Treaty of Münster 1648; also the Treaty of Guarantee for Cyprus 1959. (BTW: This is contra you statement that "every country is free to define their own law" - This is just not the case.) Anyway: this was never the case with US - just put here not to leave an important way how treaties can set-up constitutional law.

2) A treaty of former independent state to form a federation (according to your argumentation this would be the case with US-Constitution). The classical example is here Swizz Act of Federation of 1814 (Schweizer Bundesakte). In this case all involved must agree to this new union (currently we have something slightly similar process with the Treaty of Lisbon in the EU, where a veto from Ireland or the Czech Republic would stop the whole treaty for all 27 EU member states). But this is not the case with US-Constitution. Art. VII states the Constitution shall be in force if nine (of 13) state would ratify the constitution. Therefore the US-constitution is not an treaty, which would need the ratification of all involved.

You may also refer to the legal debate following the Swizz Sonderbundwar 1847, Lincoln certainly was aware of this debate and used the same legal arguments the majority of the Swizz Cantons used against the Cantons of Sonderbund ("Special Federation"). He was even on a more solid legal ground, because of the different nature of the US-Constitution versus the Swizz Bundesakte of 1814.



It does not need - see above.



The US-Constitution does vest such power with Congress in Art. I, Sec. 9:

"To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;"

and

"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, ..."

"Droit public" straight translation would be "Public right" but i think you meant "Civil right". :p

Not really - More "Public Law" - More the Roman "Res Publica" as the issues of the state in opposite to private matters. It very close to the term "Imperium" as the means of ruling.

In "droit privé" ("private law" - or better: "the law ruling private issues", e.g. contracts, marriages, etc.) no one is the "ruler".

The "Droit public" deals with the relation between the state and single person and between institutions of state: E.g. paying taxes, following orders of the state, votes, going to prison, appointment of civil servants, high treason, etc.

Hmmm Yeah, it's one of the discrepancies between french and english (notice that "droit /droite" is the same as the english term for "right" as in the direction).