About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


67 Ark. L. Rev. 1 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/arklr67 and id is 1 raw text is: Bad Company? Mark R. Killenbeck* What are we to make of current calls for secession, nullification, and/or interposition? For virtually all of us, the instinctive reaction is to condemn them out of hand, given the company they keep. Secession, after all, is the handmaiden of slavery and civil war, a violation of the bedrock principle that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union.' Nullification was secession's evil precursor: South Carolina's strange position that any one State may not only declare an act of Congress void, but prohibit its execution.2 Interposition, in turn, was embraced on November 6, 1956, by some 185,374 citizens good and true when they expressed their absolute certainty that We the People, Arkansas Division, had the right and powers to interpos[e our] sovereignty ... to the end of nullification of these and all deliberate, palpable and dangerous invasions . . . or encroachments.3 In particular, these resolute individuals proclaimed their intent to take appropriate action and pass laws opposing in every Constitutional manner the Un-Constitutional desegregation * Wylie H. Davis Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law. 1. Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (Mar. 4, 1861), in 6 A COMPILATION OF THE MESSAGES AND PAPERS OF THE PRESIDENTS 1789 1897, at 7 (James D. Richardson ed., 1897). I am not certain how to characterize the fact that Arkansas initially voted against secession, only to change its mind in the wake of Fort Sumter. See Where the Rubber Meets the Road: A Dialogue, 67 ARK. L. REV. 113, 114 (2014). Rather, I worry about the balance between principle and opportunism implicit in this fact. 2. Andrew Jackson, A Proclamation Respecting the Nullifying Laws of South Carolina, 8 Stat. 771, 772 app. (Dec. 10, 1832). 3. ARK. CONST. amend. 44, § 1 (repealed 1990). The vote tallies are available at Historical Initiative & Referenda Election Results, ARK. SEC'Y STATE, http://www.sos.arkansas.gov/elections/Documents/Initiatives%20and%20Amendme nts%201938-2012.pdf (last visited Mar. 17, 2014) [hereinafter Historical Results].