UK; Germany; Spain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_communities_of_Spain
No doubt others.
I don't think that's quite the same - legally, devolved powers just exist at the sufferance of London, right?
Hm, I didn't know that the German states have some form of international status. But still, regardless of legal setup, my understanding is that subdivisions are seen much more instrumentally everywhere else, whereas in the US, there's this idea that they're our fundamental unit, existing without connection to the federal government.
... what other county has the legal fiction that its subdivisions are almost-independent states? ...
The USSR used to. Except it turned out it wasn't really a legal fiction.
re: 3
Yes and no. The Westminster Parliament has supremacy [as does the federal government more or less everywhere else, too] but legislative powers on many issues are formally devolved to the Scottish parliament. Disputes are passed to the UK's supreme court if they arise. The legislation was set out in the Scotland Act of 1998, so it's part of the UK constitution.
re: 4
I don't really understand what you mean here. I don't really register much difference. The UK subdivisions aren't some legal fiction that just got invented a few years ago, what with them having lengthy histories as entirely independent countries, separate legal and education systems (in the case of Scotland) that go back prior to the union, etc.
And in the case of a lot of the European subdivisions, the people in 'em don't even speak the same language and they may also have a history as a distinct historic legal and cultural entity going back centuries.
It's certainly possible I'm being afflicted by essentialism here. What I'm trying to get, though, is the level of self-government: Scotland, for example, lacked its own legislature for about 300 years. Big differences in law and administration, sure; theoretical autonomy, no.
Indian states have pretty damn powerful governments. On the other hand, many of those would be largish countries if they were anywhere else.
The position of the regions in Spain is complicated by the fact that they don't all exercise their autonomy symmetrically. On the one hand you have the Basques and Catalans playing who blinks first with Madrid under complex rules that include: i. They are richer than the rest of the country put together; ii. Everybody else hates them; iii. There is a real danger of nationalist violence in the Basque country in any event, and of right wing violence in Castillian Spain in the event of either of them actually walking out. I'm not that a parallel exists in America. In contrast the regional government of, e.g. La Rioja, operates like a county council.
7: Wallonia and Flanders immediately spring to mind. I was told a few times while living in the former last year that the regional governments are increasingly responsible for nearly all of the functions where the state directly interacts with the citizenry.
It makes sense for countries that consist of islands.
And in the case of a lot of the European subdivisions, the people in 'em don't even speak the same language and they may also have a history as a distinct historic legal and cultural entity going back centuries.
I thought the phenomenon of sub-country regions being actually able to set their own policies, collect their own taxes, was more of a post-E.U. phenomenon. e.g. the region of "Tyrol" which once again is acting semi-independently despite being half in Austria and half in Italy.
I've heard that Canadian provinces have a more independent constitutional position than US states. I'm not sure how true this really is.
The solution to messed up states isn't putting everyone in the same mess. Some should probably be broken up -- think the creation of Maine -- and California (or whatever parts of it are still messed up after a breakup) needs to have a constitutional convention, leading to, among many other things, a much larger legislature.
the US's state governments have outlived their purpose
Did you mean "outlived their porpoise"?
Regarding OP.3, I think the USA ought to either split into somewhere between 3-10 fully independent nations, or demote states to provinces. Either way reduces the influence of wingnuts on people's lives (except those who live in wingnut states).
Federalism is also a recent creation in Belgium. It's interestingly complex - three regions (Walloon, Flanders, Brussels) and three communities (French, Dutch, and German, with Brussels being in the overlapping administration of French and Dutch), each with its own parliament and executive branch in addition to federal and local.
Except the Flemish Community and Region are merged.
"The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station."
a constitutional convention, leading to, among many other things, a much larger legislature
New Hampshire can probably spare some legislators, if that's the problem.
It occurs to me that the closest parallel historically was probably the German Empire before 1918. Much of Germany had obviously been annexed by Prussia, but the traditional governments in the bits that hadn't been were pretty much left to get on with it as far as their internal affairs were concerned.
I have no idea what purposes you think have been outlived. Each of the states I've lived in has had a distinct culture, and this reflects in their government. I don't have a problem with people deciding that states are too big/diverse, and breaking them up, a la Maine, but really, how on earth does taking away state powers help anyone at all?
(except those who live in wingnut states).
I hate everything.
To be more direct, how are people in California helped by taking away the self governing powers of Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona? Other than the removal of any barriers to taking all the water from the Colorado River?
Allowing the majority to effectively govern at the national level would be fantastic for California. We need national politics to be more in the forefront - state politics is obfuscatory, channeling energies in useless directions.
Australia's states are pretty independent too, in my understanding. I wouldn't know where precisely to put them on a scale with, say, the US, Germany, and Spain, but they're definitely more independent (overall) than the British devolved parliaments.
I'll compromise if we can just get rid of Delaware.
What's "fantastic" about national politics? You want Boehner and McConnell to be setting California water, air, and educational policy?
Scaremonger. I think our national politics would be qualitatively different if it were the only locale the public looked to for social justice (which it should be anyway in the current system).
25: You want George Wallace in charge of desegregating Alabama?
And devolved entities still have plenty of politics: think county governments. Who the prosecutor is, and what the priorities are, are huge deals. I suppose, though, that you want your fantastic national leadership to simply appoint such people? On a meritocratic basis? What problem are you actually trying to solve, anyway?
Delegation today, delegation tomorrow, delegation forever!
But my core problem is with the rigidity of the system. As things are, we can't rethink division of powers without decades at a time slowly turning the Supreme Court. At the least the Constitutional amendment process should not flow through the states.
What problem are you actually trying to solve, anyway?
Crappy public schools deformed by the Texas schoolbook crazies and local property taxes?
... and too small to do anything really new. ...
I have no idea what this means. Really new is not at all the same thing as large scale and expensive. And even if it it were states like California and Texas have plenty of resources. California is undertaking a massive high speed train project. (I happen to think this is a lunatic idea but that is another argument.) States are of course restricted by federal red tape like environmental impact reports that make it very difficult to do anything but that isn't exactly their fault.
27 -- I'm not suggesting that we get rid of the federal overlay, or that I think the Commerce Clause is actually any narrower than found in the Civil Rights Act cases.
26 -- OIC: Ponies for everyone!
Turns out, not so uncommon.
An, yes, Canada's provinces have a much greater degree of autonomy than US states do, though the nature of that autonomy, as elsewhere, is a matter of political contestation between provicial initiatives, the Supreme Court of Canada's efforts to havreconcile provincial and federal law (rather than simply ruling on conflict or constitutionality, as in the US), and the periodic threat of secession by Quebec.
28
... What problem are you actually trying to solve, anyway?
Apparently she objects to California having its own foie gras policy.
the US's state governments have outlived their purpose
Did you mean "outlived their porpoise"?
Unlike Louis XIV, who outlived his Dauphin.
California could destroy the whole Texas textbook thing in a trice, if it wanted to.
Problems that would be solved by elimination of states as significantly separate entities include race-to-the-bottom competition on taxes and regulation, and stupid squabbles over who's going to pay for interstate projects like that asshole Christie's torpedoing the NY-NJ train tunnel.
There's also just a lot of unnecessarily baroque law arising out of the interaction of fifty-one systems of law. I don't know how to measure the dead-weight loss there, but it's got to be significant, particularly when you include the uncertainty involved in figuring out whose law applies.
More generally, I think the states add a layer of complication to governance. If that extra complication adds a commensurate value, then fine, but if it doesn't, why not get rid of it? Every layer of complication is another affordance for powerful actors to exploit less powerful actors...
Back in the 90s when I worked in textbooks, CA got its own, as did TX (at least from the big publishers), because the demands of the big so-called "adoption states" weren't reconcilable. Now this is apparently much easier.
I think national government is important for tackling national issues, and local governments are good for tackling local issues. But state government is just a layer of middle management.
I have absolutely no problem with states or decentralized government, which is necessary for a country the size of the US. There are lots of things that the California government does better than the Feds are ever likely to do, and of course that would be doubly or triply true if we weren't hindered by our horrible state constitution (thanks progressive googoos). I do think that the precise division of powers in federalism should be arranged as a political matter by legislatures and not, except in absolute extreme cases, by constitutional law rules set by the Supreme Court.
But I do wish the state hadn't banned foie gras. I'd have to look at the law on this (I suspect the SF club hasn't, or hasn't very closely) but I for one would support a restaurant featuring banned meat products on federal land in Joshua Tree, Sequoia, or Yosemite. Or maybe on the VA cemetery land in Westwood.
38: Also, shitbird, redstate Attornies General suing over the constitutionality of every individual point of legislation they don't like.
Another big problem is that most people don't know what state governments do. Local govs run fire and police which are visible, and the national government has the President and the army, but unless you're thick in the weeds the state seems to have the DMV and that's it. In fact, of course, the state is the primary law-giving and regulatory government in almost all of the US.
45: Ahaha. I read "shitbird" as vocative and wondered how the thread got so tendentious so quickly. Nope -- appositive! Carry on!
e.g. the region of "Tyrol" which once again is acting semi-independently despite being half in Austria and half in Italy.
Forget this E.U. stuff. They should bring back the Holy Roman Empire.
What would be the number of efficient responsive divisions for a geographical area of umpteen sq miles and 350 million people?
Here's a plan:break off the twenty largest cities and declare them independent city-states, either from their states or from the nation. We can make them new states, giving us 140 Senators.
Yes, rural areas will have even more power in the Senate, but will be insignificant in the House.
49: Holy fuck, I started typing a tongue-in-check comment ~20 min ago that proposed taking the twenty (yes, twenty!) largest American cities and making them city-states, but then decided it wasn't post-worthy. I swear to God I am telling the truth.
May I rant briefly on the topic of local government in New Jersey? No, you're not interested? Fuck it, I will anyway.
My township has abou 10,000 people. We have our own elementary school district. We share a high school district with three other townships, with each township represented in proportion to its population in the 1890 census. No, I'm not kidding. So we vote for town council people and for representatives on two diffferent school boards. We also vote for two different school budgets every year. We also pay some money and some students to a third school district, which is countywide and runs a vo-tech high school, and has its own school bard which is not elected. In a county of about 250,000 people, there are 25 different school districts, with most people in two of them.
We share ambulance services with three other townships, only one of which is in the high school district. Our trash collection district has one other township, which is on the far end of the county and in neither the ambulance mor the high shcool district. Our township has its own fire and police district, although the fire department is entirely volunteer. As far as I can tell, the town council mostly just megotiates agreements with other township for loclaservices, and then says no one is actually responsible for the predictable inefficiencies.
We also have a county government, the Board of Chosen Freeholders (inevitably known as the Board of Chosen Freeloaders). Some roads are maintained by the county and some by the township, and some roads switch from county to township responsibiity along the way, meaning that they don't get plowed. A port authority consisting of representativbes from Pennsylvania and New Jersey that controls a significant amount of riverfront real estate (and some part of the roads in tha tarea); and we have the state and national governments. It's a mess.
36 is akin to Mrs. Parker's assertion that Verlaine was "always chasing Rimbauds."
In a county of about 250,000 people, there are 25 different school districts, with most people in two of them.
This is why Maryland's county-wide school districts always made sense to me. I don't understand northerners and their "townships."
Yes, complexity is a problem too. Medicaid is a good example - not just for monstrosities like this, but in dollar terms, its administrative costs are around three times Medicare's on a percentage basis.
I also think something about our system - not just federalism or decentralization, but what I'll call "state inviolability", the idea that states have some moral right to their autonomy and are not just a considered, alterable means of making the country's government more responsive - leads to our elites putting up with a lot more nonsense and stasis than otherwise, like accepting Medicaid as a joint program despite the perpetual headaches that causes.
It occurs to me that giving the federal government plenary power without abolishing or democratizing the Senate would make things worse, because at least the state legislatures are held to one-person-one-vote, but I see the changes as a package deal.
51, 54: We live in the urban part of our county of about 100K and there is a "county" school for the rural kids and various small cities, but I appreciate that we have a local city school system within our one-square-mile city and think it's a better fit for these kids (like that they will start offering free lunch and breakfast to all kids next year, since so many are eligible and some who needed it had parents who weren't filling out the paperwork, so this removes the stigma) than mixing the whole county together would be. Plus there's the rich school district that sued the state about how it's not fair that poor Appalachian schools get more money per student (or equal? I dunno) than they do when they are demonstrably more awesome than poor people, and they wouldn't like having to deal with plebes. Maybe on the whole the mixing would work out.
Nothing prevents he federalization of Medicaid.
The stuff in 51 involves devolved, rather than sovereign, entities. This could be done differently if the people of NJ cared enough to want it done differently. I don't see why I should care more than the people of NJ about the inefficiencies of their local government systems.
If you made the twenty largest cities states, then rural areas would have less power in the senate, not more. You'd be giving Texas six more senators, but they would be oddly liberal Texans.
Nothing prevents he federalization of Medicaid.
I know! In this case I'm talking about habits rather than rules.
In most of the international comparisons above, it takes only a slight leap to imagine the subnational entities as independent. Scotland already has a referendum scheduled, and how long Belgium will exist is anyone's guess. While Canada will almost certainly maintain its integrity, the Quebec independence movement is real.
Arizona? Not so much. In the States, the only exception is Puerto Rico, but that's not even a State. I think I'm on the same page as Minivet with regards to the legal fiction of sovereignty.
51: Not to harp on a typo, but I love the whimsy of unelected school bards.
How can you love bards but not love harping?
I haven't a barding license. The state Department of Bardery is a nightmare to navigate.
58:I don't think so, because the 100 "old" Senators would now pretty much be representing rural or small-pop interests exclusively.
Elected bards are notoriously populist in their song choices.
Or to put it another way, w/o doing the math, 40 Senators would represent half the population and 100 Senators the other half.
As I said, I think this would be compensated in the House, because the gerrymandering that gives representatives part-urban, part suburban and exurban districts would be made more consistent and rational.
The state Department of Bardery is a nightmare to navigate.
Oh, that reminds me, anyone with small children of the right age should read them Diana Wynne Jones' "The Dark Lord of Derkholm", and anyone without them should read it to themselves. Highly entertaining.
34: The thing that I find strange about Canada is that traditional common law crimes, if they're serious enough, e.g., murder, are Federal crimes rather than provincial ones.
67: Wikipedia says all Canadian criminal law is under federal jurisdiction with a uniform code - is there more to it than that? I do see that cases are commonly tried provincially, but still under federal laws.
66 is true for any of DWJs books. I'd go for _Archer's Goon_ in general, and certainly in a thread about devolution of governance.
68: I was just relying on what my BF said. Maybe misdemeanors are not Federal.
66 - You've read The Tough Guide to Fantasyland?
The thing that I find strange about Canada is that traditional common law crimes, if they're serious enough, e.g., murder, grand theft syrup, voler de poutine, impugning the memory of Alpha Flight, making fun of Mounties' hats, etc., etc., are Federal crimes rather than provincial ones.
Fixed.
Regarding OP.3, I think the USA ought to either split into somewhere between 3-10 fully independent nations
I also support this, but the main effect would be on foreign policy: we'd stop invading other countries. No more US-as-hegemon. The domestic effects would be more limited, and probably, on net, negative--though that depends on how open borders between the new states stayed.
Back to the foie gras thing; when I was a kid we let our Christmas goose overeat for its last ?month?, which produced a liver that couldn't have been foie gras proper but was too damn fatty for us to enjoy. Could have been culinary error on our part.
It's not that we didn't like rich food -- the roast goose was delightful. As one of my *chores*, I developed a poundcake that used twenty egg yolks, because we often had excess eggs. I used to slice that cake and butter it and toast it. Damn, that was good.
Doing the math, and just counting city population not metropolitan area, the largest twenty cities have a population of about 32 million, which is about 10% of the US population. (8 million for NYC, 4 million for LA, 3 million for Chicago, 2 million for Houston, and about 1 million for the other 16 cities on the list.)
If you want to divide the US into 50 states with an equal population, here's a way to do it.
75 isn't bad as an ecolo/econo division, either.
71: of course, but for some reason I hadn't got round to "The Dark Lord of Derkholm" until now. It's great.
Yes to 69: one of the main reasons for my considering it being a good idea to have kids is so that I would be able to read them Diana Wynne Jones.
75. What sort of congress would that map give you in a close year?
_Dark Lord of Derkholm_ is great, but I'm getting tired of trope-referential genre; hence I prefer _Archer's Goon_ in that case, or James Allen Gardner's _Expendable_ over Scalzi's _Redshirts_. In even crankier getoffmylawn, _Ready Player One_: is there ANY LIMIT to the nostalgie de la nerd of my generation? No.
75: Nice that one of the worst disadvantages they could think of was "Some county names are duplicated in new states." Some of those states span a rather large range of cultures and would have trouble maintaining cohesion. Maybe not any worse than now, but the status quo has, well, the status quo behind it. I'm thinking specifically of Bitterroot, Great Basin (which one of these gets Salt Lake City?), Susquehanna, and maybe North New England.
On the other hand, it might lead to horrible and hilarious state irredentism and independencce movements, an alternate history that has a Delaware Liberation Army and a Party For The Restoration of Greater Wisconsin.
78: Generally, more Democratic, and certainly much more liberal. E.g. California would go from 2 Democratics 0 Republicans to About 10 Democrats 4 Republicans. Bitterroot and High Plains would have about 8 fewer Republican Senators and perhaps 2 of the rightmost Democrats..
If we're rearranging the entire State system, can't we get some more parties? Delaware Liberation, Coronado Pirates, Recusant Whigs?
I didn't mean to sound too negative; that site is actually pretty great. This is wonderful. Except for the big coastal ones and Chicago, it's really hard to tell metropolitan areas apart by shape. I'm surprised how unpopulated some states are if you ignore their principal metro areas.
81 -- by my count, that map would produce 10 Republican and 4 Democratic senators from what's now California. 8 R 6 D if Portland is big enough to offset new Republican voters in Willamette from far northern California.
There's an interesting paper by a former prof of mine that fans of this thread might be interested in:
Abstract: When federalism has not been neglected or dismissed altogether in contemporary political theory, it has typically been justified in terms of exit or voice, with exit justifications resting on Tiebout sorting, competitive federalism, or both. None of these justifications are good fits with the institutional shape of really-existing federalism, in which provinces or states are too big, too rigidly entrenched, too exclusive of more-local levels of government, and too often ethnoculturally demarcated. For a justification of federalism that matches the real institution we are better served looking at a kind of argument that was once common in liberal and constitutional thought, one advocating a separation of loyalties between the central state and provinces (or other units such as ethnocultural nations) in order to keep the central state in check. The Federalist Papers, Tocqueville, Acton, and Constant all relied on accounts like this. This defense of federalism is an instance of a more general category of argument, bulwark liberalism, that relies on intermediate institutions that can correct for tendencies toward the centralization of power.
There's certainly something to this--"Don't mess with Texas!", Quebec, etc.; and Utah was certainly a distinct society, with Utah-directed loyalties, for much of its existence. But today, for the USA, I'm dubious--do NYC residents feel loyalty to the gov't in Albany more than to City Hall? ("Contempt" would have been my first guess.) And if we're talking quasi-nationalistic patriotism and fellow-feeling, again, I think upstate NY has much less in common with the NYC metro area than NYC has with Jersey City. This may not always have been true, but that's (as I recall) the main difficulty with this argument: over time, the very rigidity and entrenchment of borders that's supposedly necessary to preserve this loyalty--to make the states worth caring about--is likely to result in the socio-economic facts of housing patterns and patterns of work and exchange being increasingly out-of-sync with the still-rigid legal divisions. And once they are so out-of-sync, precisely because the borders no longer match up to any "natural" sense of a separate and distinct community, this fact will itself put pressure on the remaining sense of loyalty and fellow-feeling.
That was me, in case it wasn't super obvious.
I'm getting tired of trope-referential genre....
I said something similar once and the Flip-Pater graciously pointed out that there were plenty of books by dead people who had never even heard of Comic-Con, Brooklyn or "auctioned the movie rights for the mid-seven figures."
84 cont. -- OTOH, interestingly, I think that map could easily produce 6 Democratic senators from what's now Texas; metro Houston and Dallas would dominate those new states, and the South Texas border cities would dominate Pecos.
And then you could rearrange the boundaries after every census! Boy, that would increase the efficiency of Medicaid and cut down on strange local governance habits in New Jersey.
You can't get rid of the Senate, and you can't get rid of states. You can, however, break up and reconstitute states with the consent of the states involved, and Congress. As a practical matter, no one is going to vote themselves out of existence: e.g., you'd never get Delaware to vote to merge with either Maryland of Pennsylvania. I wouldn't be shocked, though, if at some point you could get Pennsylvania to divide east and west, now that St. Joseph has passed to another plane. California ought to be divided, and there would probably be some support for that, so long as there were provisions for irrevocable water compacts.
I believe the Texas constitution has some provision where different regions meet once every few years and affirmatively vote to stay united as Texas.
[S]trange local governance habits in New Jersey.
I don't think "the executive branch must include at least 80% fat loudmouth assholes" occurs anywhere in the New Jersey constitution.
I remember learning as a kid that there was something in the annexation that allowed Texas to divide into as many as 5 states. Inasmuch as parts formerly of Texas are now parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, there's an argument that this already took place.
91: Just the asshole part. Corzine was even-keeled and extraordinarily fit.
92: Didn't Rick Perry muse, imbecilically, on just that possibility last year?
Some quick Googling suggests that I'm wrong, but that the act of admission of Texas specifically allows Texans to vote to divide it up into as many as five separate states.
You can't get rid of the Senate, and you can't get rid of states
Nothing can ever be changed. It's wonder your beloved American revolution ever happened.
97: Seriously, would you trust the modern American electorate with your car for the weekend, much less the rearrangement of half a continent and our 300+ million sorry carcasses?
Yes, history has stopped since it does not meet your refined standards. Much like literature and culture.
You can't get rid of the Senate, and you can't get rid of states.
I'm not sure what version of "can't" you're using here. In the possible world where 2/3 of both houses vote to abolish the senate entirely (replacing it with a randomly-selected popular house instead!), and then 3/4 of the states approve that amendment--amendments plural, really, since in that event they'd almost certainly package it with an amendment to strike out the "and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate" clause of A5--in that world, you think the Supreme Court would claim the authority to strike the amendments down? The Indian Supreme Court has done that, without a particularly obvious textual basis, and the German CC has the clear authority to do so, but I think, precisely because the A5 amendment process is so supermajoritarian already, there's no way the USSC would veto it. In any possible future where the amendments went through, the Court would be standing alone against an overwhelming tide, far beyond even the anti-New Deal era, and it's hard to imagine that happening. Especially because, in any world where this might happen, popular movements in favor of it must have been building for many, many years; which means politicians will have been appointing judges who at least don't consider the idea crazy.
Of course, if you mean "can't" in the sense of, "it's incredibly unlikely to happen," well, yeah. Along with any fundamental restructuring of our institutions. That's why we're doomed.
The thread seems to have focused so far on federalism, on which I don't have particularly strong opinions, but regarding the first part of the OP, it is indeed the case that state laws generally don't apply on federal lands. This also applies to state functions that are delegated to local governments, such as zoning. There are exceptions for areas that federal law just doesn't address at all; the main example I know of is hunting, where states generally set hunting regulations for federal lands where hunting is allowed. I'm not sure how these exceptions get carved out, but I think it basically involves Congress explicitly deciding to sidestep some issue and let the states handle it.
Can't have a chicken without an egg.
It's true, though, that if you could get every state to agree, you could get rid of the Senate. Good luck with that. And get rid of states. And appoint trapnel emperor. As Norton II, maybe.
It'd take a brace of latter day William Andrews Clarks and their monogrammed envelopes to get this through the states, so maybe we're headed in the right direction anyway.
Speaking of which, oooh, just remembered that the oral hearing by the German Federal Constitutional Court on the permissibility of the Euro Stability Mechanism & the Fiscal Pact happened this morning. Exciting times!
I've often wondered if the provision allowing Texas to divide itself into five states is still valid or if they lost that right when they seceded. In any case I don't think the parts of NM etc. that were once claimed by Texas count, since Texas rescinded those claims in exchange for the federal government assuming its debts as part of the Compromise of 1850.
It's true, though, that if you could get every state to agree, you could get rid of the Senate. Good luck with that.
I'm saying you could do it with 67 Senators, 288 Representatives, and 38 states, which is quite a bit different from doing it with all 50. So let's be clear: do you think that somehow 38 states + Congress, using Article 5, wouldn't be enough? Why not? What do you think would happen? Armed revolt from Montana?
As a practical matter, getting rid of states (while not technically impossible! you haven't even accounted for the possibility of a new American revolution!) is only about a hair more realistic than imposing a Trapnelian lottery scheme. So there's that, and if we're in fantasy world I want my fucking Bugatti Veyron.
So there's that, and if we're in fantasy world I want my fucking Bugatti Veyron.
Just yesterday I saw a Maserati in my neighborhood, which was a bit odd.
106: Yes, you're right--of course we should apply the time-honored Unfogged standard of only ruminating on extremely pragmatic political actions.
I think Article 5 is pretty clear that you can't eliminate a state's equal vote in the Senate without its consent, and that this provision can't be stripped via the normal article 5 process. I don't think it's ever come up! Obviously, you couldn't eliminate the states themselves by an Article 5 amendment; you would need a new constitutional convention. At which my personal harem will appear via ekranoplan.
So. A question for Carp and Halford. Your predictions on when will either a state of the United States lose its identity/leave the union/whatever or the United States move to a significantly different governing structure or merge? (Adding Puerto Rico or Canada another territory as a state doesn't count.) And what precipitates it? I'm actually somewhat interested what people foresee.
There's a lot of country between extremely pragmatic any ponies on the head of a pin unlikely. I mean, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for coastal SoCal to secede from Sacramento, but it's not so far out that one couldnMt speculate what conditions would have to be to make it make sense in LA and Sacramento.
when will either a state of the United States lose its identity/leave the union/whatever or the United States move to a significantly different governing structure or merge?
If you mean a new constitutional order of the kind you'd need to eliminate the states, I'd say defeat in a major war, takeover of the government by armed revolution, or some kind of apocalyptic ecological crisis are your best bets.
112: And although it is undoubtedly past the sensible speculation horizon, would you foresee any of those. as possibilities in this century, i.e. within your kid's likely lifespan?
109: but again, you're not really answering my question. The claim Senate abolitionists would make would be, "oh, we're not eliminating states' votes in the Senate; we're eliminating the senate itself--maybe replacing it with the People's House (lottery!), whatever--so the without-consent clause doesn't apply!" That's a weaselly argument, but it's no more crazy than the new Activity/Nonactivity Commerce Clause distinction, and as you say, there's absolutely no precedent here, so why not? Plus, just to be safe, they'd be sure to always pass a "delete the without-consent clause" first Amendment in each ratification process. My claim is that, in a world where you went this route, I think it's unlikely that further barriers (USSC, armed revolt by dinky little states) would stop things.
It's possible that a lawyerly respect for constitutional niceties would have some independent effect, convincing decision-makers who'd prefer abolitionism on substance to vote no for procedural Rule of Law values, but I honestly doubt it, especially once a campaign got going to produce Respectable Serious Arguments from think-tanks and academia about how abolishing the Senate in total is way different from picking on individual states, and totally constitutionally legit. This would depend hugely on the party system configuration; 38 states + 2/3 House means almost surely you'd need it to be a cross-cutting alliance, which, again, would make party-line irredentism less likely.
I do agree that redrawing the states w/o unanimous consent would be truly revolutionary, and so it'd be a lot harder to get folks to go for the "wink, nod, yeah it's constitutional" approach--though, again, first you pass an amendment striking out A4s3 ("nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress"), then you redraw the borders.
||
OT: I'm suddenly feeling as if I'm in a parody music video along the lines of "I'm on a Boat!", but entitled "I'm Eating Kale!"
|>
Sure. FREX, we still have a bunch of nuclear weapons floating around. But in the event of anything on the list in 112, reordering the relationship between the state and federal governments is not going to be priority no. 1.
It's kind of like "Giant Fireball From Space: What Will It Mean For Your Clients' ERISA Compliance?"
Alien invasion could come at any time. If there are aliens. Military defeat 50 years hence; 50 years is a long time, but not so long as it used to be. I donMt see the kind of cetripedal forces they had in the Soviet Union where a coup was enough.
This reminds me that when I was in law school, the law journal got a submission entitled "The Law and Economics of Terraforming Mars."
110: the question is interesting, but why on earth would you think lawyers would have any special insight here? Would a poll of European jurists ca. 1500 have been useful in predicting the next few generations of changes in the Holy Roman Empire?
I don't see state identities as easily lost at all. I mean no matter how messed up things get, at least we're not Wyoming.
I suppose, though, that if you had a state polity that was resisting capital in some truly disruptive way, and had a government that couldn't be bought outright, or replaced with bought people, or overridden by federal power; well then you'd have some real power behind a get rid of at least one state amendment. Which would require you to get rid of the can't get rid of states without their consent provision. Alien invasion might be more likely than a state legislature that can't be bought.
Although, on second thought, I suspect renaissance/reformation-era jurists were probably, by necessity, more attuned to politics than are lawyers today.
Trapnel, we can see the future, eat glass, and drive speedboats with our minds. It's why law school takes three years.
When Florida is underwater due to global warming, will it still get to vote in the Senate? It could see it being the 22nd century version of a rotten borough.
119: Sure, anyone can answer--it was just that Carp and Halford were the ones who were standing out in the thread as not brooking any discussion in which the existing order gets significantly rearranged.
119: Sure, anyone can answer--it was just that Carp and Halford were the ones who were standing out in the thread as not brooking any discussion in which the existing order gets significantly rearranged.
While also saying "Citizens of New Jersey could rearrange their local governments at any time if they thought they were inefficient. What's stopping you?"
I was thinking for a minute that diminishing federal funding might get some states (eg the Dakotas) to merge, but the more likely outcome is a variation of what ui sees in NJ: continued political independence, but services combined (and outsourced, probably). There would still be sufficient patronage to dispense in both Pierre and Bismarck, that either would resist a movement to surrender to the other.
125 -- and the creation of Maine as a separate state is a pretty big deal, imo.
The federal structure of the United States will change when it no longer serves the best interests of a critical mass of our ruling oligarchs.
Some quick Googling suggests that I'm wrong, but that the act of admission of Texas specifically allows Texans to vote to divide it up into as many as five separate states.
Pretty sure that even if that wasn't made void upon the readmission of Texas, it was always redundant - even in the treaty it required Congressional approval, making it no different from the normal Constitutional procedure for splitting or otherwise reorganizing states.
The thread seems to have focused so far on federalism, on which I don't have particularly strong opinions, but regarding the first part of the OP, it is indeed the case that state laws generally don't apply on federal lands. This also applies to state functions that are delegated to local governments, such as zoning. There are exceptions for areas that federal law just doesn't address at all; the main example I know of is hunting, where states generally set hunting regulations for federal lands where hunting is allowed. I'm not sure how these exceptions get carved out, but I think it basically involves Congress explicitly deciding to sidestep some issue and let the states handle it.
Thank God, someone getting to this. So you think it probably requires an affirmative act of Congress to allow any state laws to apply?
Maybe this has been said above, and it's tangential to the question of whether states are useful, but I think what makes the U.S. administratively distinct isn't so much that the country is divided into a number of smaller units that have a fair amount of autonomy but that the states are more or less equal to each other throughout the U.S. and that this has been true for all states that have considered themselves to be states (that is, secessionist states during Civil War and Reconstruction are another story, but the Union was the Union).
It seems pretty common for large countries to have administratively distinct regions, some/many of which have a degree of autonomy, but I think it's more often the case that there are different levels of status that a region can have. So some are more autonomous than others. This is often the result of different deals being made over the course of history: conquest, annexation, response to separatist movements, attempts at country-wide administrative reform, reorganization after a revolution, resurgence of regional identity (often related to linguistic identity), and so on.
The US actually has many of these characteristics, but you don't see them if you look just at the states. The US states were created through conquest and annexation, but the eventual path to statehood and then the equality of states has tended to obscure the variety of terms made at the time of annexation. So has the fact that the treaties and negotiations over borders and such that were actually adhered to largely took place among the states themselves or with Mexico and a few European powers, rather than with Native American groups, who also signed treaties but who saw the US government(s) mostly push on with whatever it wanted to do anyway.
In the late twentieth century and on, the US seems to have decided to stop making new states and start doing a better job of recognizing Native American rights. So you do see different levels of autonomy in the US - reservations, territories, etc. - but with most of the country made up of states, it's still the states that stand out.
Wouldn't it be cool if the states were really different? When I visited California all the new varieties of fast food was very exciting, for instance. And I couldn't believe all the different donut shops. Does anyone ever say "I wish they spoke English in Quebec"? Keep Quebec weird.
Now seems like the right point to mention The Forest of Time by Michael Flynn, an alternate history where the formerly British colonies remained separate after the Revolution and developed very differently. Most of the main characters are from a Pennsylvania where most people speak Pennsylvannisch and is at war with its Anglo neighbors.
Sounds like Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen.
130 -- It's more complicated than that, I think. There's something called the "federal enclave doctrine" that regulates when state or federal law applies; my sense is that some state laws, like drivers licenses or the right to vote apply, but others, like state labor law, do not. Also only some but not all parcels of federal land are "enclaves"; some are just buildings in states owned by the federal government. But I just know of the existence of the doctrine; I've never had it come up in practice.
Here's a quick summary for you, specifically about the Presidio, (from a brief so I'm not vouching for its accuracy), and then I'm done:
Ceded to the United States government by the State of California in 1897, the Presidio of San Francisco is a federal enclave. See Cal. Stat. 1897, p. 51; Totah, 2011 WL 1324471 at *1 ("Lucasfilm is located on the Presidio, a federal enclave."). When state property becomes a federal enclave, state laws that are in effect at the time of cession and are consistent with federal law are assimilated into federal law, unless expressly abrogated by Congress. See U.S. Const., art. I, § 8, cl. 17; Paul v. United States, 371 U.S. 245, 263-64 (1963). But any state laws enacted after cession have no force on the enclave, unless Congress specifically authorizes their enforcement. See Swords to Plowshares v. Kemp, 423 F. Supp. 2d 1031, 1034 (N.D. Cal. 2005); Taylor v. Lockheed Martin, 78 Cal. App. 4th 472, 481 (2000). For decades, courts have recognized both the Presidio's federal enclave status and the fact that, as a result, the Presidio is governed exclusively by federal law. See Standard Oil Co. v. California, 291 U.S. 242, 244 (1934); Totah, 2011 WL 1324471 at *2.
If the Wikipedia page can be believed, yeah, they're surprisingly similar. I'm sure Flynn was inspired by Piper. That they're both Pennsylvanians probably informed their choice of setting. Forest of Time is less of an adventure and more introspective--the main conflict is tension over whether their otherworldly visitor (a stranded, a la Sliders, pacificistic academic) is real, insane, or a spy, and if he is real whether they should help him leave or trick him into revealing technology they can use to win the current meaningless war.
122: It would be more impressive if you could see glass, eat speedboats, and drive the future with your minds.
130, 135: As Halford notes, it's complicated. The text he quotes seems to imply that the "enclave" thing applies to land owned by the state that becomes federal later, which is a pretty unusual case. (Maybe it applies in other circumstances too, but I've never encountered it.) Most federal land has always been federal, and as a general matter most state laws don't apply there. National Parks don't charge sales taxes, for example. What I remain unsure about is how certain state laws come to have effect on federal lands as well.
So, I broke my promise and skimmed a bit more. It seems that the rule is this:
There is "exclusive" jurisdiction over federal enclaves. Under Article I of the constitution, which specifically grants Congress exclusive jurisdiction over federal arsenals and the like.
Before 1940, federal land ceded by the states automatically became an enclave. That involved a lot of military bases. After 1940, Congress needs to specifically approve enclave status. If it's not an enclave, state law just applies normally and the exclusive jurisdiction provision does not apply.
If it is an enclave, then (generally) regulatory laws in effect at the time the enclave was granted will apply; regulatory laws enacted after that date will not. State benefits for residents of federal enclaves will generally apply, however, so that e.g. someone who lives on Yosemite can be taxed by California, has the right to vote and drive in California like a normal California resident, etc.
Or, put simply, it seems like the Presidio Social Club is right -- they can legally serve their foie gras no problem.
I am not claiming to be expert in any of this.
Also, the Presidio Social Club could probably fire its gay employees for being gay, since California law wouldn't apply and there is no comparable federal law against sexual orientation discrimination. I bet they don't, though.
139: everything you read from here on should be filed under "I know you already know this."
It's maybe worth noting that yes, if you're talking about overall acreage, you're absolutely right: most federal land has always been federal. But if you're looking at new units of the NPS -- monuments, memorials, historic sites -- in recent years, the majority of them have involved taking private or state property and turning it into a federal possession. That process has often been complicated and contentious. Again, I know you know all of the above, but it still seemed worth a mention.
Also, I'm still pissed that you (and fake accent and neb and several others) didn't seize the opportunity to copy-edit my book manuscript for me. I'm looking at the page proofs right now, and they're riddled with errors. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!
It's maybe worth noting that yes, if you're talking about overall acreage, you're absolutely right: most federal land has always been federal. But if you're looking at new units of the NPS -- monuments, memorials, historic sites -- in recent years, the majority of them have involved taking private or state property and turning it into a federal possession. That process has often been complicated and contentious.
That's true, of course, and it's not just a recent development. The same was the case for eastern parks like Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah starting back in the 1940s. Still, NPS lands are a small proportion of overall federal lands, the recent units you're talking about are mostly quite small for NPS holdings, and the overall trend throughout US history has been for land to generally move from federal to non-federal ownership rather than vice-versa.
I didn't know that. I thought they were still mostly reserving for new purposes already federal lands. In the West, anyway.
And I would totally have copy-edited your book if you had given me the opportunity. The fault, it is yours.
I thought they were still mostly reserving for new purposes already federal lands. In the West, anyway.
There have been some recent National Monuments along those lines, but they've mostly remained in BLM management rather than transferred to NPS.
143.last: I am horribly injured that you didn't even see fit to mention me in that list.
So NPS is buying land? Surprising.
On the preemption question, it's no surprise that 5 minutes of search reveals that the issue has been litigated several times, and it's fairly complicated. There's 18 USC 13 -- Congress applying state criminal laws to federal lands -- but on the civil side, you end up, it seems to me, with a preemption analysis.
NPS buys land all the time. There's a whole Lands division that is tasked with buying up inholdings, negotiating easements, etc. I presume they would also be the ones who work on acquiring land for newly authorized parks.
150 -- Yeah, dribs and drabs, sure. But whole parks?
Cal Coastal Comm v. Granite Rock Co was a 1987 Supreme Court case over whether a mining company operating of Forest Service land also had to get a state permit. The answer was yes, but here was the line-up:O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and BRENNAN, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined, and in Parts I and II of which POWELL and STEVENS, JJ., joined. POWELL, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which STEVENS, J., joined, post, p. 480 U. S. 594. SCALIA, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which WHITE, J., joined, post, p. 480 U. S. 607.
Early Scalia, but you can see the snark:
Any competent lawyer, faced with a demand from the California Coastal Commission that Granite Rock obtain a § 30600 coastal development permit for its Pico Blanco operations, would have responded precisely as Granite Rock's lawyers essentially did: Our use of federal land has been approved by the Federal Government, thank you, and does not require the approval of the State. We should not allow California to claim, in the teeth of the plain language of its legislation, and in violation of the assurance it gave to the Federal Government by designating its Coastal Act as a coastal management program under the CZMA, that it would use the permitting requirement to achieve, not land use management, but only environmental controls. We should particularly not give ear to that claim since it was not the representation made to Granite Rock when application for the permit was demanded. If environmental control is, as California now assures us, its limited objective in this case, then it must simply achieve that objective by means other than a land use control scheme. If and when it does so, we may have occasion to decide (as we need not today) whether state environmental controls are also preempted. More likely, however, the question will not arise in the future, as it has not arisen in the past, because of the Federal Government's voluntary accommodation of state environmental concerns -- an accommodation that could not occur here only because California neglected to participate in the proceedings.
Yeah, dribs and drabs, sure. But whole parks?
Well, they're not big parks. Mostly individual houses and so forth.
Also, I'm still pissed that you (and fake accent and neb and several others) didn't seize the opportunity to copy-edit my book manuscript for me.
Honestly, had I still been in grad school (or, depending on when you started soliciting copyediting services, had I not been finishing my dissertation/going on the market), I would've done it.
146, 153: it's not too late! Just shoot me an e-mail, and I'll send along the proofs as a PDF! You can give them a quick read, find all the errors contained therein, and send them back marked up (electronically)!
All kidding aside, I'm in the home stretch. I have to return the proofs to the press by the end of the month. That said, the copy editor really did a terrible job. It's disheartening to find so many errors at this stage, including, I must say (in high dudgeon), errors that were introduced by the copy editor's team in the last round of editing. Harumph!
Truly, I didn't see 148, though it would have been funny if I had. Really, though, send me an e-mail, and I'll be happy to blight your inbox with my page proofs. Really. And truly.
I'm buzzed, stuffed with Italian food, and in North Carolina. It's been like ten years since the last time.
I'm buzzed, stuffed with Italian food, and in North Carolina.
You're coming out as the copy-editor of my manuscript? I'm not sure I believe you. The mistakes would have been funnier.
Anyway, I read one of your cobloggers books and I said, "Good, but not enough on not-China" so maybe your book will be different.
I agree with 14. I propose 5 geographically defined super-states of nearly equal population. 1. The West - west of the Continental Divide. 2. The Plains - between the Continental Divide and the Missouri/Mississippi River. 3. The Midwest - between the Missouri and the Ohio. 4. The South - south and east of the Ohio/Mississippi and the Potomac. 5. The Northeast - northeast of the Potomac.
Or alternately, divide CA and TX and institute the "Wyoming Rule" for representatives.
163: That unfairly benefits the ruler of North America in a game of Risk.
73
I also support this, but the main effect would be on foreign policy: we'd stop invading other countries. No more US-as-hegemon. ...
Personally I prefer our wars be fought abroad.
Does anyone ever say "I wish they spoke English in Quebec"? Keep Quebec weird.
Never mind language. What's truly weird about Quebec is its partly-Napoleonic-in-origin Civil Code (the rest of the Canadian provinces have an English-y common law system).
The cheese curds thing with fries and gravy is also pretty weird, MC.
The cheese curds thing with fries and gravy is also pretty weird, MC.
Poutine: Canada's gift to the world of unusual and unexpected (as in, 'Do people really eat that stuff?!') cuisine.
I love cheese curds: such a salty, squeaky treat. I would probably love poutine, too, except that I'm a vegetarian, and the gravy is always meat-based. Chip wagon fries with cheese curds and mushroom gravy? I would totally enjoy that.
Personally I prefer our wars be fought abroad.
So do the people whose countries you choose to fight them in.
If there was no more US-as-hegemon, you'd be able to try just not fighting them for a bit.
POUTINE IS AWESOME AND NOT WEIRD AT ALL!!!
166: wow. Shearer, the last man on the planet to still believe that "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here".
Notice there's no hint that the alternative to fighting wars abroad might be not fighting wars at all. IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF SHEARER'S WORLD THERE IS ONLY WAR.
POUTINE PUTIN IS AWESOME AND NOT WEIRD AT ALL!!!
Tut, such spelling!
163 is funny to me because I wanted to argue about where I'd end up. But I'm already living at the state line that historically defines the South versus Midwest and yet I feel both absolutely Midwestern and yet marginally more attached to my state, sucky as it is politically, than to the across-the-river-Northward state.
172
166: wow. Shearer, the last man on the planet to still believe that "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here".
Actually my comment was a reference to the War Between the States one of which is enough for me.
" No more US-as-hegemon. ...
Personally I prefer our wars be fought abroad."
i wish China would invade the US from the space, just to teach JBS and his silent unfogged supporters a lesson who is a hegemon
175: but wasn't most of the War between the States in fact fought abroad - on CSA territory? (A Union supporter would say that it was all US territory, but then a Union supporter wouldn't call it the War between the States.)
167: Doesn't Louisiana have a little of that, too? Another weird thing about Quebec, during the week of Canada Day,* the Quebecois love nothing more than to fly simultaneously the Quebec flag and the Stars and Stripes. Burn!
*As everyone likely knows, Canada Day falls about a week after the Fete Nationale du Quebec and a couple days before the 4th of July.
167 yeah Louisiana has civil law stuff going on.
Also 3 is wrong. For instance, the High Court of Justiciary exists as a result of the Act of Union, not at the sufferance of Westminster.
177
175: but wasn't most of the War between the States in fact fought abroad - on CSA territory? (A Union supporter would say that it was all US territory, but then a Union supporter wouldn't call it the War between the States.)
This is all in response to 14 and 73 which advocated splitting the US into pieces. I am against encouraging wars between parts of what now is the US.
Louisiana isn't the only state that has a civil law heritage, as anyone living in most community property states can attest. But I sure don't know how Wisconsin ended up with that. (What do you bet that someone here already knows the answer?)
(And there's said to be a whiff of anti-Mormonism in Idaho's adoption of CP from California . . .)
But isn't Louisiana law overwhelmingly civil?
Looks like Wisconsin only became so when it adopted the Uniform Marital Property Act sometime after 1983.
The logical consequence of the preference expressed in 181 is a preference for one world government (eventually).
Louisiana law is formally civil law but with essentially all the terms interpreted so as to effectively bring it in line with ordinary US common law. So everything is basically the same but has a totally different and weird name. AFAICT this has had little relationship to the overall weirdness of Louisiana, which is overdetermined.
Also, you damn well better find local counsel who is friendly with the judge. We are now close to the limits of my knowledge of Louisiana law.
I saw cops on Segways in New Orleans. That made it pretty difficult to take Louisiana law seriously.
186
The logical consequence of the preference expressed in 181 is a preference for one world government (eventually).
Not really. It's like optimal currency unions. If they get too big the internal strains become too great.