In 2006, a screenwriter, contemplating a political farce about the secession of Maine from the United States, solicited the opinion of the 10 Supreme Court justices on the legality of secession. One responded to the screenwriter's query: Scalia. Scalia wrote:

I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, "one Nation, indivisible.") Secondly, I find it difficult to envision who the parties to this lawsuit might be. Is the State suing the United States for a declaratory judgment? But the United States cannot be sued without its consent, and it has not consented to this sort of suit.

I am sure that poetic license can overcome all that — but you do not need legal advice for that. Good luck with your screenplay.

Allow me to engage in a bit of poetic license. Per the previous discussions on this blog, it has been noted that, despite hot air rhetoric from the political right about secession, secession, if it were to actually occur, would likely come from a blue state, particularly one in either the Northeast or Northwest, regions where concentrated anti-war sentiment and religious unindentification are the strongest, and, for the most part, where most states therein are federal tax losers and not federal tax feeders(btw, it should be noted, Maine is actually an outlier, being a significant federal tax feeder).

Consider a scenario where Sarah Palin is elected President in 2012, an unlikely event, but one that would be made much more likely under a scenario of the Dems using Budget reconciliation to enact Health Care Reform vis a vis a mandate and a public option; I would contend that this potentially could be an overreach akin to the GOP's "Terry Schiavo" moment. In the context of a stagnated economy, that is, stagnated, sticky unemployment and creeping inflation, incumbents of all stripes, but particularly Dem incumbents, including Obama, would be vulnerable. There is no doubt that a Palin presidency would be just as polarizing to the Political Left as the election of Barack Obama has been to the Political Right. As Roderick Long notes, we would fully expect all those Dems to start dusting off their libertarian manifestos, keeping in mind that in our little story, the Senate, institutionally speaking, has been neutered as a legislative block against ideological elements of transient majorities. Now, allow me to add three additional ingredients to thicken the plot. One, legislation is passed, by narrow majority, to exclude abortion and narrowly restrict options for women reproductive rights from "the public option." Two, another internal terrorist attack, or an Israeli or American strike against Iran, and the rhetoric from a Palin Administration begins to resemble late night, end-time Bible TV infomercial evangelicalism...Finally, it is a self-evident, given the liabilities of SS and medicare, that the so-called 'social contract' regarding entitlements is going to be rewritten. As it stands now, it's going to be done during Obama's second term, rest assured. I predicted a year ago that the Obama Admin was going to focus on such out of political necessity, in light of escalating deficits. But if Palin is elected, then it's Palin who is going to spearhead the rewriting of the entitlement social contract. Let me inform you that entitlement reform is going to be a major issue, and it's going to be pushed on the offensive by the Obama Admin. In case anyone needs a clue, Obama is about Obama; he's not about the Dem party, which should have been evident when his apparatus took control of the DNC, scrapping Howard Dean's 50 State strategy in favor of re-centralization geared toward his re-election. His entitlement reform platform is going to leave a lot of traditional democrats seeking re-election sucking wind, cognizant of the fact that oxygen is already going to be in short supply after 2010. If you are a partisan democrat, you better hope he wins.

So, that's my poetic license in constructing a narrative of Blue State Secession, from progressive States not all that tied into the DC Democrats, unwilling to live with the consequence of Sarah Palin as a result of Dem Party miscalculation. It's not exactly likely, but it's not a zero probability either.