Don’t ink out that 50th star just yet

Call it an interesting historical quirk. Call it an oversight that deserves to be corrected in the 2012 election.

Just don’t call the omission of a word from the North Dakota Constitution a real threat to statehood. Because it’s not, according to the authorities whose views on statehood carry significant weight — namely, Congress and the federal courts.

Grand Forks resident John Rolczynski has for years suggested that the one word omission means North Dakota is not a state. The word is “executive,” and the state document omits it in listing those officers who must swear to support the U.S. Constitution.

That’s in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Article VI, which declares that “all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or affirmation to support this Constitution,” Rolczynski maintains.

But while Article VI does require executives “of the several states” to take an oath, it does not declare that state constitutions must echo this exact demand.

More important, Article VI does not control statehood. Article IV does, when it declares, “New states may be admitted by the Congress into this Union.”

Congress admitted North Dakota on Nov. 2, 1889. Case closed, which is why 122 years have passed without a challenge making its way to the floor of the U.S. House or Senate or a federal courtroom.

Rolczynski, 82, is a tireless advocate whose fascinating career included time spent as a Russian linguist with the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s. His constitutional theory caught the ear of state Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo, who co-sponsored a bill to add the word “executive” via constitutional amendment next year.

Rolczynski’s persistence is a triumph for “a citizen accomplishing a public policy objective, which to me, is a testament to democracy being alive,” Mathern told The Forum newspaper in Fargo.

Mathern’s right, and the amendment will be welcome. Rolczynsk has identified a real-world gap in the state constitution, even though it’s not the hinge on which North Dakota’s statehood swings.

Tags: north dakota, opinion, editorial, statehood