What is the &quot;preamble&quot; to a ballot measure called? Oregon ballot measures have this basic format (this particular one is an initiative for a constitutional amendment, but referendums [referenda?] are similar, as are measures for regular legislation): Whereas, ABC is good and XYZ is bad, and Whereas, the state government currently promotes XYZ rather than ABC, and Whereas, the state government should promote good things, Be it enacted by the people of the State of Oregon, Article 1, Section 1 of the Oregon Constitution is amended to read, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. What is the &quot;whereas&quot; part called?
These are called recitals. See: Termly legal dictionary: recital US Legal: recital Wikipedia: recital (law) Wiktionary: recital, n. 5 (law)
If the U.S. adds a new territory, are the people currently living there able to become president? No. Or does the territory have to become a state in order for the people to be eligible to become president? Not necessarily. What does &quot;natural-born citizen&quot; mean? The meaning of the natural born citizen clause of the constitution is unclear in many respects, but virtually all scholars agree that a person who was a US citizen at birth, and who has remained a US citizen until present, is a natural-born citizen. There is a small minority of scholars who insist that a US citizen at birth is only a natural-born citizen if they were born in the US (for example, Ted Cruz would not be considered a natural-born citizen). There is an even smaller minority who insist that a person must have at least one US citizen parent in order to be a natural-born citizen. But for all practical purposes, these minority viewpoints are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether someone was a US citizen when they were born. Citizenship of people living in US territories When a US territory is created, the people living there don't automatically become US citizens, and if Congress eventually gives them US citizenship, the canon of presumption against retroactivity applies: a statute should not be read to be retroactive unless there is evidence that it was intended to apply retroactively. That means the people who get US citizenship under the statute don't become natural-born citizens; they're considered to have been automatically naturalized when the statute went into effect. But if there's a statute saying that people born in the territory are US citizens at birth, then people born in the territory after the effective date of that statute are natural-born citizens, since they are citizens at birth. I will use Hawaii as an example. Hawaii became a territory in 1898. Citizenship was granted in 1900. Statehood was not granted until 1959. 8 USC §1405 governs the citizenship of people born in Hawaii: A person born in Hawaii on or after August 12, 1898, and before April 30, 1900, is declared to be a citizen of the United States as of April 30, 1900. A person born in Hawaii on or after April 30, 1900, is a citizen of the United States at birth. A person who was a citizen of the Republic of Hawaii on August 12, 1898, is declared to be a citizen of the United States as of April 30, 1900. So, Hawaiians didn't become US citizens when Hawaii was annexed. They were granted US citizenship 2 years later. A person born in Hawaii on or after April 30, 1900 is a natural born citizen. Applying the presumption against retroactivity, we see that a person who was born in Hawaii between August 12, 1898 and April 29, 1900, or who was a citizen of independent Hawaii when it was annexed by the United States, was not a natural born citizen and could not have become President. In addition to the presumption against retroactivity, there is also another canon of construction that applies here: Congress could have used the &quot;is a citizen of the United States at birth&quot; language for the other two categories of Hawaiians too, but chose to omit it. Presumably, Congress acted purposefully in doing so, with the intent of granting citizenship at birth to only one of the three categories. (I can't remember whether this canon has a name.) Can Congress grant natural-born citizen status retroactively? If the US were to acquire a new territory and saw fit to bestow citizenship retroactively to birth on some natives of that territory, would those people be eligible for the presidency? No one knows the answer to that question. As an example of when Congress has granted citizenship retroactively, the Immigration and Nationality Technical Corrections Act of 1994 created 8 USC §1401(h), which granted citizenship retroactively to birth to individuals who had been born outside the US to a US citizen mother and alien father prior to May 24, 1934. This act was necessary because, prior to that date, only US citizen fathers could transmit citizenship, not US citizen mothers. A person granted citizenship under this statute would be over the age of 89 now, so we're unlikely to see one run for president. It's an open question whether someone who obtained US citizenship through this statute would be considered eligible for the presidency. One could argue that &quot;natural-born citizen&quot; implies a person who actually was a citizen when they were born and that retroactive grants of citizenship are a mere legal fiction that cannot override the meaning of the constitution.
While &quot;clause&quot; has a specific definition in linguistics, that is not how it is used in laws and legal documents. These terms have no standard definition for legal writing. Documents or legal codes that use both generally use &quot;article&quot; to mean a larger division than &quot;clause&quot; does. In discussion of the US Federal Constitution, for example, the largest divisions are called &quot;articles&quot;, each of which is divided into several &quot;sections&quot;, and each section generally contains several &quot;clauses&quot;. Some of these are actually grammatical clauses, being part of a sentence with a verb and a subject, while others might be called paragraphs in ordinary prose. A given document or legal code should ideally define which terms it will use for its parts, and which contain which others. This can be done in whatever way the drafters wish, but it is desirable that it be clear. In addition to the terms you have mentioned, terms often used include &quot;subsection&quot;, &quot;subsubsection&quot;, &quot;title&quot;, &quot;paragraph&quot;, &quot;subparagraph&quot;, &quot;chapter&quot;, &quot;part&quot; and &quot;division&quot;. These are not used consistently, and I have never seen a single document or code that uses all of them. The Us law code is divided into titles, each of which contains sections. In some of these sets of related sections are grouped into chapters. Sections may have subsections or paragraphs. In my experience smaller contracts or business documents rarely use &quot;articles&quot; and some just use &quot;section&quot; for any named or numbered part of the document. Usually titles or section headers are explicitly stated to have no legal effect, and the division into sections or other parts is simply to facilitate reference, and does not have legal significance. Whether a provision is called an article, a section, or a clause will not normally change its legal effect. However, where one part of a document refers to another part, such as &quot;as specified in section 23&quot; then the reference will be found in and only in the designated part, and will not be looked for in some other part.
There isn't to the best of my knowledge, any single document that tells courts to follow precedant or when and how to do so. Each State, and the Federal government, has a set of court rules of procedure. These will indicate, among many other things, the form that should be used in citing previous cases, but that is about form, not content -- about how to cite a case, not about when a court should or should not cite one. Some precedents are what are called persuasive. These are from other court systems: say a different state, or even another country. These also include rulings from other courts at the same level, say from a different district, or even from lower courts. Other precedents are binding. These are from a superior court to the one where the case is cited. In a state's lower court, rulings of that state's supream court are binding. In Federal district courts, rulings of the Court of Appeals for the same Circuit, and of the US Supreme Court are binding. In Federal appeals courts, rulings of the US Supreme Court are binding. They are also binding in state courts on matters where the US constitution is involved, or where Federal law supersedes state law. Prior rulings of the same court are strongly persuasive, but not strictly binding -- a court can overrule its own precedents when it thinks the law or justice requires this, although most courts are reluctant to do so. Or more often it can distinguish a previous ruling, saying, in effect: "that previous ruling is still valid, but this is a different case in such and such a specific way, so the result is different". Students in law school spend a good deal of time learning how precedents are cited, and how they should be used, learning what sorts of things are controlled by precedents, and how to find the precedents that apply to a particular case. When they become lawyers and then judges, they taken this body of learning with them, and use it in writing decisions, and opinions that explain those decisions. New law from the legislature can reverse previous court decisions, except in the case of decisions interpreting the constitution (federal or state). Amendments can change the constitution. Judges must adapt to such changes in the law. To a significant extent our system of precedent is a matter of tradition, going back largely to the common-law courts of England, although it has been modified by specific legislation in many ways, as well as by more recent court decision and practice. It is passed on in law schools, in legal apprenticeships of various kinds, and in individual court decisions.
Each state has its own election laws, so you will get 50 different answers depending on what state you are interested in (perhaps 49, since Washington doesn't have polling places - depends on what you mean by &quot;poll watcher&quot;). This page is a starter list of legal resources. This page starts you on deconstructing this notion of &quot;poll watcher&quot;. Colorado is one state that explicitly allows partisan observers, here are the rules. No person is compelled to be an observer, so I don't understand who you think might be abusing a poll watcher. Perhaps you are referring to the possibility that an election official will prevent an observer from doing their job. Or perhaps you are thinking that being a poll watcher abuses the intent of some law. Whatever you have in mind, there are laws in each state that say what is allowed and what is forbidden, so you have to address this at a local level. No state has a requirement that observers must come from or swear allegiance to the majority party of that polling jurisdiction (e.g. county, or precinct). Any attempt by election officials, or anyone else, to block observers from the minority party would be rebuffed by the courts. The courts will not attempt to divine inner motivations for sending an observer. Most states allow partisan observers. Michigan distinguishes &quot;challengers&quot; and &quot;poll watchers&quot;, and there are distinct rules and powers for the two sets. A crucial difference is that a watcher cannot legally challenge a claimed right to vote or a precinct board action, but a challenger can. There are rules of conduct imposed on both kinds of observers, one of them being that you cannot challenge a voter for the purpose of annoying or delaying the voter. This is a misdemeanor (a crime) under MCL 168.727, and as a criminal prohibition, the state would have to prove intent beyond reasonable doubt. Blog posts by the observer might provide sufficient evidence, but speculation by the majority party would not.
No. This is black-letter constitutional law. From Article 1, section 9: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
As @cpast says in their comment, these are not equivalent punishments, the fine is for the lower end of the scale where incarceration is not warranted and the maximum gaol term is for the most egregious cases. That said, your supposition is almost certainly correct; statutes tend to be a &quot;set and forget&quot; thing, legislatures have a lot to do and going back to old laws to update fines in line with inflation is probably not high on their list of priorities. In order to overcome this problem all jurisdictions in Australia have adopted the Penalty Unit; fines in statutes are stated as a certain number of penalty units and the value of a penalty unit is set in various ways that usually do not require a vote in parliament.
Is that really so, though? Is there, since 2007, no single place in U.S. regulations (including e.g. the Federal Register) that says that e.g. electric current is supposed to be measured in amps? More generally, what is the current legal situation with units of electric measure (the volt, the ampere, the ohm, etc.) in the United States? These units are authorized for use by 15 USC 204, quoted in the question. The statute further authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to interpret or modify the standard, but it does not require it. In the absence of any such interpretation or modification, the provisions of the standard are authorized as they are. Also, what exactly did the lawmakers mean by 'repeal of redundant and obsolete authority' in the case of 15 U.S.C. 223 and 224? They meant that there was no need for those sections, which specifically authorized the use of certain metric-system measures, in light of the general authorization to use the entire metric system.