Constitutional Loopholes for Independence – Medium
How the U.S. could set a state free, without a
constitutional amendment
Could the United States let a state become an independent country, if the political will existed to do so? Or would such an effort founder on the United States’ extremely high bar for amending its constitution?
In this article, I’m going to demonstrate that although the United States does not include a direct process for granting independence to a state, it has enough other powers that it can effectively do so anyway.
To be clear, I’m not arguing for a new interpretation of the U.S. Constitution here (e.g. arguing that the process for admitting states ought to be reversible because of symmetry or something).
What I’m saying is, if you use nothing but powers that we all agree that the federal and state governments have, under the U.S. Constitution as we currently understand it, you can create a process where you start with a state… and end up with a country.
