Sovereignty Resolution

of the

Oregon Territory

Whereas Amendment X of the Constitution of the United States, otherwise known as Article X of the Bill of Rights, expressly says, "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", and

Whereas Article I, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States, says that all legislative powers therein granted are vested in the Congress of the United States, and

Whereas Article I, Sections 8 & 9, enumerate all those legislative powers granted to Congress, and

Whereas Article I, Section 8, paragraphs 7, 9, 12, 13, & 17, detail the legislative powers that relate to the ownership and control of real property within the United States and the States of the United States, thus limiting that ownership and control to specific matters, and

Whereas the above referenced grants of power refer specifically to post offices, post roads, tribunals inferior to the supreme Court, raising and supporting of armies by appropriations for the term of not more than two years, provision and maintenance of a navy, exercising exclusive legislation over the District of Columbia (with a limitation of its size to ten miles square) and like authority over all places acquired for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards and other needful buildings (with the limitation that such properties must be purchased from and enjoy the consent of the legislature of the State in which the same shall be), and

Whereas the federal government currently lays claim to and exercises authority over vast land holdings for purposes far different than their enumerated powers (in most, if not all, cases without purchasing same or obtaining the consent of the legislatures of the States affected), and

Whereas the legislatures of the States do not individually have the authority to override the clear provisions of the Constitution of the United States, even when in collusion with the Congress or the President of the United States, and

Whereas the Oregon legislature has not given lawful consent or received lawful payment for these federally claimed and controlled lands held unconstitutionally within its boundaries, nor has it filed effective complaint of same, and

Whereas the Constitution of the State of Oregon, Article IV, Section 1, reserves to the people the initiative power allowing them to legislate independently of the Legislative Assembly,

Be It Therefore Resolved that an Act reclaiming ownership and control of Oregon territory currently claimed and controlled unconstitutionally by the Federal Government, by withdrawing legislative consent to same, be adopted by the people of the State of Oregon through the initiative process, and vesting title to same in the counties in which the same shall be.

Resolved by Jack Alan Brown Jr, James E. Rafferty, Barbara L. Gonzalez, & a host of Constitution-minded citizens in Oregon.