Talk:Slavery and States' Rights
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Lir, both the location of where this speech was given and its broader context may be helpful. user:sjc
Webster simply didn't know what he was talking about, or else deliberately chose to present a false analogy. His logic is valid in terms of ordinary contract law, but not of feudal relationships - which are what have passed down into this sort of constitutional and international law. With those, it is not like contract law at all. Contract law roughly says that the keeping of a promise is exchanged for the keeping of another promise, but feudal law says that the making of a promise is exchanged for the making of another promise, with the keeping being separately enforced and independent of the keeping of the other. (There is the possibility of a loophole, in that each promise may itself say "...provided the other promise is kept".) All this comes from the fact that there is no outside supporting and enforcing framework, unlike contracts within a polity. PML.
What is "nationalist" supposed to mean in this context? How will the average well-informed reader have any clue to what the original writer intended to convey? P0M 23:54, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
