A Just and Lasting Peace : the incomplete constitution

The federal congress and the three branches of the general government have whatever powers the document expressly grants them.

Does it or does any branch have implied powers?

The document is silent.

Does it or do they have inherent powers?

The document is silent, unless these are what the document itself refers to as, respectively, the executive, legislative, and judicial powers.

But there is nothing in the text itself to tell us what all of those are, or what they do not include.

And reading Montesquieu will tell us for sure only what he thinks, or thought when he wrote The Spirit of the Laws.

Unlike the ill-fated Articles of Confederation, the Philadelphia Constitution contains no assertion of the perpetuity of the union its very drafting put so deeply at risk, and its method of ratification set at null.

But neither does the constitution anywhere expressly say that states, once in, may leave.

Nor does it offer even a hint on what terms or by what process they may leave, if indeed they may.

Does the reserve powers clause help us out, here?

Amendment X:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Yes, I think so.

If there is a power to withdraw from the union or even dissolve it altogether, into whose hands is it reserved?

The states, I think. 

Does each state have a power to secede individually and unilaterally?

Given the assertion of perpetual union, repeated so emphatically in the Articles of Confederation, was so notably dropped from the Philadelphia constitution, I think it reasonable to suppose these powers exist and are reserved, and would be even without the tenth.

May federal courts nullify state or federal laws or other acts if the court is satisfied they are forbidden by the constitution?

The constitution is silent.

May the states nullify federal laws for the same reason?

The constitution is silent and I am uncertain whether it fairly counts as a reserved power. 

Madison thought so, as did others whose opinions carry weight. 

The famous compact theory says the constitution was adopted by the agreement of the several states.

In support we note that each state had one vote in the Continental Congress, in the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, at the Philadelphia convention, and in ratification of the Philadelphia constitution. 

The theory is historically accurate but supplies no answer to any of these questions.

The nationalist theory that the constitution was adopted, or even written, by the people of the whole union is nonsense, even as metaphor.

But, again, it doesn’t matter.

The document says what it says and is silent where it is silent.

Who wrote it and how it was delivered or how it became authoritative leave those same silences just where they are.

Lincoln's claims that the states were created in and by the union with the Declaration of Independence, which itself created "a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and have never existed apart from the union and cannot exist apart from the union are a mix of historical truth and politician's hot air.

See this for what that declaration "created."

The Declaration of Independence