And there is the crux. And my point, as well. It all depends on who is making the opinion. No, they are not the same, but yes, it is the same entity. And for that reason we can not depend upon it to set legislative precedent, such as 'deciding the legality of Secession.' That is the job of our legislature; one that it has ever shirked.
If we place an importance upon one court composition of jurors, yet not another... how them can SCOTUS mean anything to anyone, at all, by virtue of its existence as an art form? We will always have to be seeing who the actors were at that time before we can give it any credibility, or not. Because at no time do any elected figures come into the playing field as neutrals; they all have a letter after their names, and are owned by a faction of the voters, however slim the majority that elected them to power.
By the time of Texas v. White, we have three Texas entities; The Original, the Seceded Confederate, and the Newly-Formed Federally-Approved Permanent Union version. Three different versions of the same state. We also have two different ideas in the same political party about what Texas 'was' when it was 'not wearing blue.' The Radicals are swinging from the Lincolnian idea of "Let the Unionist Minority of Each State Up Easy" by calling them a majority whole... by ignoring anything that was not Unionist (i.e., the Confederates) -
- all the way down to treating them all as "Captured Provinces, Dragged Back in Kicking and Screaming" in order to give the Congress ten years of plunder while they "Reconstruct" each state.
The latter would appear to have actually been the case, as the third version of Texas was not the original version of Texas - as such as Philip Sheridan would never have been consulted in the formation of the original, nor would any of the leaders who were selected have been selected in the original. Thus, Chase is wrong. Change has occurred, and the Union had indeed been violated irreparably.
Chief Justice Chase, however, says that the state has not changed since the Articles of Confederation; that in order to enforce the perpetuity thing, the Articles are a more perfected Union under the Constitution... and so, Texas was in the hands of the politically-insanely-incorrect, or what Justice Grier called, in his dissent of Texas V. White (there were two others in dissension, as well), as being seen as having been done 'while under the disease of an insanity."
Chase is incorrect. The Original Texas did change when it went Confederate, and that would then make Three Texases, and not merely the One Texas Unchanged that Chase desires to infer... because it changed a third time when it was Permanently Unionized.
Original Texas is Confederate Texas. Original Texas seceded, which is also why Present Texas is not Original Texas. Confederate Texas was the result of Original Texas seceding from the Union, whether it was recognized defacto, or not.
Present Texas has been told they can not think that way, any longer, about Secession, and so they don't. Thus, we have Three Texaii, or Texases.
But actually, we have only two; Southern Sovereign Turned Confederate Texas and Forced Union Northern Owned Captured Province Texas. In others words, the two political parties who went to Civil War with each other...
... and now, we have justices who are divided by these very same politics, as well. (Grier was a doughface).
And you want to see about getting a 'ruling' based on 'law' from these guys?
It gets even better.
Aside from Texas v. White not being 'unanimous,' again it smacks of a might makes right situation. Rather like the Union victory. Numbers shall decide morality, and righteousness, in every case.
And we have not yet even begun to discuss the bonds, and who owes what to whom, and why, and for how much??? We are not even out of 'discovery' (compulsory disclosure), yet!
Now, none of this is based upon anything in the United States Constitution. None of it. It is all political, and use-justified, and militarily-derived from the war.
The Constitution, written in the negative, as are all law books (Thou Shalt Not) says nothing about Secession, unilateral or otherwise. The Constitution confers no such power to decide the legality of Secession by inference or by decree by any version of the United States Supreme Court. It confers no power of Judicial Review.
Thus, this is the opinion of a Sitting Political Party, just as Dred Scott was the opinion of a Sitting Political Party. And it has about as much morality, and legal morality, as well.
As always, it was the Legislature's job to consider Secession, and to put it up for an Amendment, one way or the other. It is not the job of a president, (who actually chooses the political party justices!) And as always, the Legislature choked, and chokes, and continues to choke. It refuses to do its duty, and chooses rather to allow some executive to compromise his integrity, for votes, or else to allow some judiciary to clean up a mess intended for its own members.
And so this is why I say that the SCOTUS is here today, gone tomorrow, and set up by a political faction in control of the force of arms in its decrees... which means it can also be undone, in the same such manner.