Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2019 March 1

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March 1

What are the requirement for being admitted as a state in usa.

And, are there any requirements that the states must follow?

Can a state be expelled, or can it succeed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sliggerguy (talk • contribs) 22:13, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

See Admission to the Union. The basic "requirement" is that Congress has to approve it. I don't think there are any other official requirements for admission, but once a state is admitted, it has to follow the federal constitution.

No, it is not possible to expel a state. Article V: "...no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.". --Trovatore (talk) 22:20, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

That's not quite the same thing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:04, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Well, let me put it this way: There is no constitutional mechanism for expelling a state. The provision I quoted is the only remaining unamendable part of the constitution (technically, it is also impossible to amend the constitution to say that slaves cannot be imported prior to 1808). Prior to 1808, it was impossible to amend the constitution to forbid the importation of slaves

I suppose, theoretically, an amendment could be passed allowing expulsion of a state while allowing it to keep its senators. But that would be bizarre. --Trovatore (talk) 18:57, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

But as is often the case with these sort of things, the effective of the clause is disputed. Per our article Article Five of the United States Constitution#Amending Article V, some legal scholars argue especially since the entrenchment clause doesn't actually entrench itself, an amendment to amend that clause is possible. An amendment (or whatever the amendment specifies I guess) to expel a state without their consent would then be possible. I wonder if an amendment specific to allowing the expulsion of states would receive additional support, especially if there's compelling evidence that the original intent (yes I believe this is somewhat dead in modern US legal jurisprudence but who knows if it will revive) was only really to stop states being given unequal or no representation while remaining members of the union, rather than to stop them being expelled. (I have no idea what lead up to this entrenchment so perhaps expulsion was actually forefront on the minds of the drafters.) I also wonder what the passing of the amendment would do regardless. Assuming that it was passed via the state legislatures, would the at least 3/4 that did so be considered to have given their consent to expulsion? Or is the standard required for consent higher? Or did they only give their consent as part of a constitutional amendment affecting all states, so if the amendment is held to be unconstitutional, it couldn't affect them exclusively. (Note that per the same article, the provision to do with the apportionment of direct taxes also couldn't be amended prior to 1808.) Nil Einne (talk) 03:53, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

A state may not unilaterally secede, per Texas_v._White. From my reading of our various articles on the constitution, there has not been anything about whether a state may leave the Union if there is agreement from congress. RudolfRed (talk) 22:34, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Ah, good for you for figuring out what the OP meant by "succeed". I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. --Trovatore (talk) 22:36, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

As specified in the Constitution, states are required to have a Republican Form of Government.John Z (talk) 23:42, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

But that's just part of "they have to follow the constitution". I don't think there's any requirement that they be republics before admission. --Trovatore (talk) 23:43, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

As a practical matter, the states have started out as territories already fairly much under the control of the US government, effectively "grooming" them for statehood per constitutional guidelines. Some territories were given independence, which is kind of a nice form of "expelling". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:02, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Although no state has ever been expelled from the Union, the state of Virginia was forcibly stripped of a large part of its territory during the American Civil War, resulting in the creation of the state of West Virginia. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:20, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't the constitution say you can't take land from a state (maybe even give it land) without its consent and possibly Congress too? Though the Virginian government (Richmond) was committing secession and the Virginian government (Wheeling?) wasn't so they found a way. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:25, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Yep. In brief, the US position was that secession was unconstutitional and therefore the de facto state government in Richmond was not a legitimate body. This allowed for a body to be created in Wheeling that the US would recognize as the legitimate government of all of Virginia. And they consented to the creation of West Virginia from part of Virginia. See West Virginia in the American Civil War. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 09:40, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

You may be interested in a closely related topic: What happens when the border between two states is a river and the river moves? See examples, such as McKissick Island and Kaskaskia, Illinois. 68.115.219.139 (talk) 13:45, 4 March 2019 (UTC)