The thing many non-Americans don't understand (and many Americans, too, I'm afraid) is that the states in the USA are not provinces. They're called "states" because they were individual countries that decided to form a ~partial~ union. The US Constitution defines what are the powers of the Federal government, and specifies that all other powers are reserved for the individual states. The states, then, decide what prerogatives are to be ceded to the counties and towns.
I say this in partial adjustment of Mr Metz mention of Supreme-Court cases. The US Supreme Court has indeed refined the sometimes-vague language of the Constitution - deciding, for example, that some of the restrictions on the federal government (about freedom of religion, for example) are to be enforced also all the state governments. (The Constitution says simply "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"; the USSC decided long ago that the states may not do so either.) But despite frequent complaints of "judicial activism", in which a judge issues a decision based not on what the law is but what the judge thinks the law should be - complaints which I utter myself, from time to time - when you actually read some USSC decisions, it seems they pay more attention to the concept of Federalism than is commonly understood. Please pardon the rant. It happen I'm having a long-running debate with my best friend about this very concept, and the subject is fresh in my mind. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* Easy credit terms available. -Satan */ ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Martin Packer [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2020 11:02 AM I wonder how deciding what is a state, county, township prerogative and what is a federal one works. Probably on a (legal) case by (legal) case basis. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
