Opinion ID: 2457791
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Arkansas Resolution of Interposition

Text: Be It Resolved And Enacted By The People Of The State Of Arkansas: The people of the State of Arkansas express their firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Arkansas against every attempt, whether foreign or domestic, to weaken or destroy the structure of the State and federal governments. The People of Arkansas will ever defend and maintain the fundamental principle of our basic laws by which certain powers were delegated by the people of the separate states to the governments of the separate states while other specifically enumerated powers, not delegated to the separate states or reserved to the people, were delegated to the federal government. The State has never delegated to the Supreme Court of the United States the power to change the Constitution of the United States. The People of Arkansas assert that the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political faith depends. The People of Arkansas assert that the power to operate public schools in the State on a racially separate but substantially equal basis was granted by the people of Arkansas to the government of the State of Arkansas; and that, by ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, neither the State of Arkansas nor its people delegated to the federal government, expressly or by implication, the power to regulate or control the operation of the domestic institutions of Arkansas; and any and all decisions of the federal courts or any other department of the federal government to the contrary notwithstanding. Therefore, The People of Arkansas, By Popular Vote: 1. Respectfully appeal to all the people of the United States and to the governments of all the separate states and request them to join the people of Arkansas in taking steps, pursuant to Article V of the Constitution of the United States, by which the Constitution of the United States be amended so as to contain a provision substantially as follows: `The legislative executive and judicial powers of the United States as granted under the Constitution shall not be construed to extend to the regulation of the public schools of any State nor to include a prohibition to any State, in the exercise of its power, to provide by its laws for the establishment, operation and maintenance of racially separate but substantially equal public schools within such State.' 2. Pledge our firm intention to take all appropriate measures, honorably and legally available to us, to resist any and all illegal encroachments upon the powers reserved to the State of Arkansas to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own exclusive judgment. 3. Urge upon the separate States and the people thereof their prompt and deliberate efforts to prohibit any further encroachments by the federal government upon the powers reserved to the separate states and the people thereof.