Marriage has been referred to as a UNION between a man and a women
Who are citizens of independent states, and thereby subject to the laws thereof.
That's not the case with independent states themselves; and therefore unions between such, are not subject to any outside laws (or inferences based thereon) to
negate their respective independence, to unite as a singular
new independent
state.
Rather, only
express assertions of such action and intention by the independent states themselves, can do this.
Accordingly, independent states do not
lose their sovereign independence to conjoin as
larger independent states, simply by failing to
expressly retain it in international compacts.
On the contrary, they must expressly manifest an intention to
relinquish their independence to another state— whether joining to become part of an existing nation-state, or uniting to form a
new independent nation- state; as noted in Blackstone’s influential
Commentaries, that in the case of a nonconfederate, “incorporate union” such as the 1707 union of England and Scotland, no rescission option existed:
“The two contracting states are totally annihilated [qua sovereign states], without any power of revival; and a third arises from their conjunction, in which all the rights of sovereignty … must necessarily reside.”
However the precise
wording in that 1707 document that united England and Scotland into the single nation of Great Britain,
expressly manifested this intention. To wit:
"That
the two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall, upon the first Day of May next ensuing the Date hereof, and for ever after, be united into one Kingdom by the Name of Great-Britain, and that the Ensigns Armorial of the said united Kingdom, be such as her Majesty shall appoint; and the Crosses of St. Andrew and St. George be conjoined in such a manner as her Majesty shall think fit, and used in all Flags, Banners, Standards, and Ensigns, both at Sea and Land."
This is because such national union, can
only be expressly manifested by the nations themselves.
It can
never be inferred by outside interpretation; for the obvious reason that sovereign nations are their own final authority, and hence any outside inference would be inherently void.
And this new “one Kingdom by the name of Great Britain,” was the very kingdom from which the Founders
seceded; and therefore they would naturally be the
first to know the difference between national vs. international compacts.
In contrast, neither the Constitution, or any other American founding document, ever
likewise expressly manifests uniting the individual independent sovereign states together, to create a single
new independent nation-state, to which they would become
dependent states.
Rather, the Constitution is an international compact, just as with the UN or the EU, or indeed the Articles of Confederation.
The main difference is that it is established by the respective
people of each independent state, who were thus established as the supreme final authority therein; and they simply
delegated various powers to state and federal governments, as detailed in the
body of the Constitution.