Hi John!
You wrote:
Francisco Martin wrote:
Also, you are conflating nationhood with statehood. The concepts are different.I must confess that I don't know what you are getting at here. Statehood as in "state" on the international stage, which means nation. Or statehood as in the domestic U.S. usage, which does not mean nation. If the former, I think the American states were, by 1787 (if not before) clearly not states in the international sense, and therefore the action of the state people in forming a constitution was not a treaty, in the international law sense. If the latter, then the constitution-making was even more clearly not a treaty-making endeavor. But perhaps I am missing your meaning.COMMENT: Nations are peoples. States (whether foreign states or the individual states of the U.S.) are bodies politic with international legal personhood, recognized as having such by other foreign states (although the doctrine of state recognition under international law is unclear). Sometimes a state is equivalent with its government, but not necessarily because in some states (e.g., UK) new governments come and go. A nation-state is the entity constituted by both the state and its people. The U.S. are/is "nation-states" because there is one American people (hence, "We, the People") and several states (hence, the preamble continues with "of the United States") constituting the U.S. I hope that this is clearer.ForrestFrancisco Forrest Martin
