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Altered States in the WSJ

Here’s one for Strange Maps. An interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal, the Saturday edition, focuses on attempts to realign state borders by seceding from one to state to form another or by merging parts of multiple states to form a new entity. There are two errors, one by the author, Michael J. Trinklein, and one by the illustrator, John Burgoyne.

In one part of his article, Trinklein discusses seceding not to form another state, but seceding from the Union as a whole. Trinklein mistakenly writes “Seceding from the nation is illegal and, practically speaking, impossible.” Not so! States are guaranteed a constitutional right to secede by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, part of the original Bill of Rights. However — and it’s a mighty big however — this is one of those ever-increasing realms in which the constitutional right differs from the accepted practice. While the Constitution says one thing, it has become an established — though unwritten — convention that the Union is permanent, a result of the use of brute force by the federal government of the rump of the Union in the 1860s. The war to re-conquer the Southern states was of course illegal itself, but force of arms is usually enough for a power to establish a convention when the more legitimate constitutional means are impossible.

Conventions are much numerous in Commonwealth countries that employ the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy than in presidential federal republics like the United States. For another instance of where convention tends to trump the actual constitutional law, the document of the Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land (in addition to whichever treaties the United States has entered into; a curious and perhaps unwise decision by the drafters) but the established convention is that a ruling of the Supreme Court which is contrary to the Constitution is followed and enforced anyhow, despite the appearance of irregularity. This is the convention which is perhaps most controversial today, and most likely to be overturned sooner or later.

The other error is not by the writer, but by the ever-capable illustrator John Burgoyne (handsome examples of his cartographic skill can be found at his website). One of the proposed states is ‘Superior’, which would consist of the Upper Peninsula currently within the state of Michigan. The illustrator mistakenly awarded the Upper Peninsula to Canada while locating the proposed state within the boundaries of Wisconsin. Rum luck! Curiously, the combined shape of the erroneous Superior with the Upper Peninsula looks rather like the outline of the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus.

A more full view of the map can be found here or under ‘Interactive Graphics’ through the article’s page at wsj.com.

Published at 4:30 pm on Saturday 17 April 2010. Categories: Errant Thoughts Politics.
Comments

The ghost of General John Burgoyne, perhaps, back to make up for the loss of Saratoga!

— Dino Marcantonio 18 Apr 2010 12:23 am
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