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Show -15- procl-.iraing to all the world that it is the supreme law of this land. Inter- national lav; as so developed, frcm time to time, also upplies to the States in their relations and dealings with each other unless inconsistent with the federal constitution or with compacts made between such States, because the States are still foreign to each other for all but federal purposes;3U and none of them, by virtue of .its own constitution or by any means, can establish any law other than international which it can urge rightfully against any sister Stp.te.35 So far as the federal constitution permits the building up of any system of interstate law, differing from international law and applicable to contro- versies between the States.of the American Union, such new code of quasi- international law arises only from compacts, usages and customs of the States in dealings with each other as voluntarily submerged sovereignties on the same plane of equality-just,as international lav/ has originated from like relations in the family of nations. And similarly the legislators and moulders of such interstate law, if any, are the political heads and departments of the State governments* Permissible usages and customs of the States in their sovereign- relations after adoption of the federal constitution may logically be given the 33 The indestructibility of the American Union is a patriotic myth. States cannot secede but by unanimous consent may dissolve the Union. The legislatures of two-thirds of the States may force the submission of constitutional amend- ments (by the .convention method) and the legislatures of three-fourths of the States may adopt such amendments. Cn the present distribution of population (1920 federal census) the twelve most populous States have fifty-nine million inhabitants and the thirty-six remaining States have forty-six million in- habitants. It requires only a majority of the State Legislators (representing a little more than half of the forty-six million people) in the thirty-six States to amend the federal constitution; and amendments so made may revoke and withdraw, one by one, every important sovereign power deposited in the federal government, and remove, one by one, every restraint upon the States* Extremely unlikely to be used, the power nevertheless exists whereby States containing much less than a majority of the people of the United States and acting by the will of only a bare majority of the people within those States, can recall the federal sovereignty granted by the constitution as now existing and leave the American Union merely a loose league of independent, sovereigm Statest ^Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 12 Pet,(XJ.S.) 657, 9 L. Ed. 1233 (I838). ^"The State governments are independent of each other, and to the extemt cf their powers arc complete sovereignties. The National Government begins ¦where the State governments terminate. . <> This Government is also, according to the extent of its powers, a complete sovereignty." President James Monroe, in his message to Congress on May Ij., 1822. 6 Writings of Monroe, 223; 2 Messages of the Presidentst lli8» "No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down th.e lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into* one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their Spates." Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, in McCulloch v. Maryland, k Wheat. (U.S.) 316, U03> 1+L. Ed. 579, 601 (1819). |