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December 4

Subnational laws

In all federations, are there laws that differ between subdivisions, such as states, provinces, cantons or parts of countries like Bosnia-Hertzegovina or Belgium? Are there any laws that are dedicated to provinces of Argentina, Brazil, India, Mexico, Germany or Austria, or cantons of Switzerland? And in countries like US, Canada or Australia, are there any local laws that differ between local governments? --40bus (talk) 20:16, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Links to a number of relevant articles at State law... -- AnonMoos (talk) 21:17, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, not sure I'm a big fan of that page. It has one blue link, to US state law. All the other links are red, and many are to titles that would not naturally exist at all, unless maybe as redirects-from-misnomers or something. For example state law (Germany)? What's that? The German Länder are not called "states". --Trovatore (talk) 21:56, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(I went ahead and searched, and to my bemusement our article on the Länder is at states of Germany. Hmm. I don't think that's a good title. I've always heard them called Länder, untranslated. They're broadly analogous to US states, I suppose, but not really the same thing.) --Trovatore (talk) 22:13, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've been looking at Law of Texas in order to verify if its specifical statutes visibly differ from the German cases where the concept of Succession of states comes into question: following analyses exposed in de:Land (Deutschland) in German Wikipedia. "Succession of states" as discussed in that last article has a focus probably more highly contrasted in matter of "rights and obligations" than would apply to U.S. States. In the case of Texas law for example I note the importance of Common law as a defining influence, whereas in German law the same unifying level is rooted very differently. I imagine that the american linguistic pluralism at root also implies some repercussions in classes of problems turning to the inside rather than to abroad. Consequently perhaps the specific problems that appear and were shown in the idea of Secession. --Askedonty (talk) 00:16, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Askedonty: I'm really having trouble following that. What are you trying to figure out here? Is it about whether Land is reasonably translated as "state" in the sense that it's used in "US state"? If it is, I don't really follow the argument; I'm not even sure whether you're arguing for or against. If it's not then I'm even more confused. --Trovatore (talk) 01:06, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

German Wikipedia define the U.S.A. as a "föderal aufgebaute Republik" which is absolutely similar to the German "Bundesrepublik". To anybody there is a strange feeling at equating "State" with "Land" so I do not see what reluctance there has to be seeing there is an explanation for it. --Askedonty (talk) 01:19, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

~~No reluctance;~~ I just wanted to understand better the structure of your argument. It was a little hard to figure out what you were getting at. --Trovatore (talk) 01:22, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(Actually now I'm not sure about the "no reluctance" part, because on re-reading "I do not see what reluctance there has to be", I don't actually understand what that means either.) --Trovatore (talk) 01:28, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, no problem. "Länder" means that Germans living there might be have their families rooted there for ages. I do not think that aspect can be translated without some circumlocutions. --Askedonty (talk) 01:44, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In several languages, the usual term for a Land of the FRG uses a part that is cognate to state. For example: Basque Alemaniako estatuak (pl), Danish Tysklands delstater (pl), Italian Stati federati della Germania (pl); Spanish Estado federado (Alemania). When used for a specific Land and no confusion with the sense of "federal state" can occur, this is often simplified, as in Italian lo stato di Baden-Württemberg.^[1][2][3] --Lambiam 08:21, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the subdivisions have separate legislatures, there are bound to be differences. --Lambiam 22:33, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The original question asks in countries like US...are there any local laws that differ.... In the US, "local" usually means city or county level. This will vary from state to state, but typically city and county laws are called "ordinances" and regulate comparatively lesser matters than state law (state law handles almost all one-on-one violent crime, for example). City ordinances tend to be about things like how often you have to mow your lawn or whether you can drink alcohol in public. Violations are usually "infractions" with relatively light penalties (though fines can be fairly heavy in some cases, like for removing a tree that you're not supposed to remove in Woodside, California). --Trovatore (talk) 23:02, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Like the USA, Australia is a federation of states, so it has federal (national) laws, state level laws, and municipality based laws. The latter are like city laws in the US, but not all our towns are called cities. Unlike the USA, our constitution is primarily about what states are responsible for and what the federal government is responsible for. HiLo48 (talk) 03:33, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As with most things in the US, the distinction (if any) between "town" and "city" varies state-to-state. I'm most familiar with California, which has no official legal distinction, but the municipality in question can call itself "town" or "city" as it pleases, usually depending on whether it wants to give the suggestion that it's semi-rural (see Town of Los Altos Hills). Completely different are the New England towns, which I don't know much about except what I've read in Wikipedia. --Trovatore (talk) 03:56, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The US Constitution does, in fact, delineate the powers of states and of the federal government. American states are not "subdivisions", they are separate entities which joined the USA. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:14, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many subdivisions of current sovereign states, all over the world, were at some time themselves independent sovereign states that later gave up their sovereignty, sometimes not entirely voluntarily, and joined a larger entity. The USA is not exceptional. --Lambiam 09:42, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The American states have not given up their sovereignty. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:08, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then why don't they apply for UN membership? Too much effort? --Lambiam 03:40, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's a different concept of sovereignty. The theory of sovereignty in much of the world is that it has to be unique; there is only one sovereign at a given place and time. The US, at least historically, explicitly rejects that idea, embracing divided sovereignty instead. --Trovatore (talk) 03:49, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For that matter, recognized Indian tribes in the U.S. also have partial sovereignty, their own courts, etc. - Jmabel | Talk 05:12, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Readers who want to know more about this can check out our article on tribal sovereignty in the United States. Lots of interesting complications if you like that sort of thing. --Trovatore (talk) 19:44, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lambiam -- In the second half of the 1940s, when Stalin was arranging things so that the Byelorussian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR had separate memberships in the United Nations (distinct from the Soviet Union's overall membership), he offered to agree to several U.S. states being admitted to the U.N. but the U.S. didn't take him up on it. AnonMoos (talk) 00:03, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I did not know that. Wow. Which states in particular were OK with Uncle Joe? Or was it just a number, let the states play musical chairs for it? --Trovatore (talk) 20:01, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Texas, Texas, Texas, Texas and Texas. —Tamfang (talk) 20:42, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure it didn't get that far (probably stayed within the Truman White House and State Department), since it would have been a violation of the U.S. Constitution ("No State shall, without the Consent of Congress...enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power"). AnonMoos (talk) 00:12, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that the U.S. is at the extreme of how much laws about rather important matters vary from one jurisdiction to another: at the state level, differences include: whether or not there is a death penalty and (if so) under what circumstances it can be applied; whether cannabis is legal, and almost everything about its regulation (and more or less the same about alcohol, though no state currently has an outright ban); what is the minimum wage (defaulting to the federal minimum wage if the state does not pass its own); almost everything to do with education; almost everything about how elections are run. Also, since Dobbs, pretty much everything about abortion. In some areas, federal law reliably trumps state law, but not in everything (there is relatively little the federal government can do to prevent a state from passing a criminal law, other than either challenge it as unconstitutional or threaten to withhold funds unless they change it).

U.S. states usually have more ability to limit what smaller jurisdictions can do, so they can preempt local ordinances (usually the term, rather than "laws", at the city/town/etc. level, but just as enforceable). Still, often they don't do that, even in ways where you'd think they would. Where I live in Washington state, the minimum wage varies from county to county and city to city, with the state setting only a "minimum minimum". And it gets even more confusing because, for example, King County sets a minimum wage for unincorporated areas of the county, with incorporated communities able to go higher or lower. In Texas, the legality of selling alcohol is a "local option" patchwork. And sovereignty gets trickier in terms of Indian reservations, hence the "Indian casinos" even in states where gambling is otherwise illegal.

And, yeah, that's just more about the U.S., but I think people from elsewhere have trouble imagining what a patchwork it is here. - Jmabel | Talk 05:12, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Mexico: I know Mexico City legalized gay marriage years before the rest of the country. But if we have a decent article on federalism in Mexico, I haven't seen it.

In Spain, Catalonia semi-legalized cannabis (allowing "cannabis clubs"); there has been a bit of a fight back and forth with the central government over whether they can do that. And, of course, in Spain each autonomous community makes its own decisions about much of the educational system (which often involves laws) and most have opted to have responsibility for a health system devolved to them, though some have chosen not to take that on. For more on Spain, you can look at Autonomous communities of Spain#Constitutional and statutory framework. - Jmabel | Talk 05:23, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]