My constitutional law prof on Texas Secession

Or, instead of blowing half a morning doing a c----y job trying to respond to Gov. Haircut’s comments (he’s still wrong on the right to secede), I could have just picked up the paper and let my ConLaw Professor reply.

From today’s Statesman:

According to The Associated Press, Perry suggested in response to a reporter's question that Texans might at some point get so fed up with Democratic-led actions in Washington that they would want to secede. [Note from me: at least he never actually advocated it.]

"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that? But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

On Thursday, Perry called potential secession a "side issue of Texas history. ... We are very proud of our Texas history; people discuss and debate the issues of can we break ourselves into five states, can we secede, a lot of interesting things that I'm sure Oklahoma and Pennsylvania would love to be able to say about their states, but the fact is, they can't because they're not Texas."

A Perry spokeswoman said Perry believes Texas could secede if it wanted.

Sanford Levinson, a professor at the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin, said that between the Texas Constitution, the U.S. Constitution and the 1845 Joint Resolution Annexing Texas to the United States, there is no explicit right for the state to return to its days as a republic.

"We actually fought a war over this issue, and there is no possibility whatsoever that the United States or any court would recognize a 'right' to secede," Levinson said in an e-mail.

Levinson noted that the 1845 resolution allows for Texas to break itself into five states but doesn't specify whether that would require congressional approval — and forming new states still wouldn't constitute secession