Hacker News Reader

Comment by __derek__ | Hacker News Reader

You're conflating two different terms. As was pointed out in another comment, your understanding was more or less true under the Articles of Confederation but stopped being the case with the ratification of the Constitution. The American word 'state' is a relic.

View on HN

Not exactly. I've had loads of conversations with people from other countries who were amazed at the degree of independence of the States.

It's not really typical for administrative subdivisions of a country to have their own criminal law, be allowed to sentence you to death or put you in prison, issue their own identity documents, raise militias, etc.

Yes, the federal system reserves more rights for American states than are enjoyed by, say, French régions. They're still a far cry short of sovereign states.

It isn't?

The only two other federal countries I can think of off the top of my head that has different criminal law in different subdivisions are Australia and Mexico.

In Canada, criminal law is unified on the federal level. So far as I know, this is also the case in Germany and Switzerland.

Any other prominent examples?

It looks like the subdivisions of the UK also have their own criminal law (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_criminal_law )

Ah, good point. Although the case with UK is a bit unusual, in that all those powers are still devolved from the British Parliament (and so it could rescind them with a simple majority vote in theory... though that would surely trigger a constitutional crisis now) - so technically it's not federalism.

In contrast, most federations designate who has the power to enact criminal law in their respective constitutions.

The English word 'state' is accurate, and American usage is consistent with e.g. British.

Consider terms like "member states of the European Union", "sovereign state" and "head of state".

You and I are talking about different things. My closing sentence could have been more explicit, e.g.:

> The American usage of the word 'state' to refer to the constituent members of its federal system is a relic of a time when they were effectively sovereign states.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com