Is there any country that acknowledges people’s right to not participate? I was trying to look through the US Code to see where it says what I would consider to be the axioms of a country and its law, something like: There is an entity called “The United Stated” This is the land that defines it: (territory) The country is also defined by people who constitute the country; they are called “citizens”. Who is a citizen is determined in a way described later. The United States can make laws, or statements about what citizens must,can, or can not do. There is a body / group of people - called the “government” - they have more ability than other citizens to create or change the laws. (There are laws to be described later about how it is determined which citizens are in the “government”.) The United States enforces laws on its citizens. That means, there is a law that says that the government has the ability to require citizens to follow laws; and what ways it can respond to anything forbidden by law, is described later. I think I did find roughly that under “Organic Laws - Articles of Confederation” in the US Code, but I think what I did not expect is that it appears to be the document that was written in the 1700’s, without there being a sort of modern rephrasing, and collation of all laws into one single document, rather than a library of different ones. Maybe the nature of law is it’s very hard to change an essential law’s phrasing, so it remains word for word over time? What my real question is, is in our time, it seems that almost all “space” is owned / controlled by a “country”. It’s like a default assumption of our time that the world divides into countries. I’ve been thinking about how it could be useful and upright research to design different “human systems” - mechanisms, guidelines, rules - starting with small groups and exploring larger ones slowly - to try to explore “government” or political philosophy actively and empirically, like scientific research. But it just occurred to me that if someone wanted to try to explore a small society based on certain rules, there is an extent to which it might feel limited so far as it was limited by the country the research was happening in. Also, it’s like humans don’t have the right to live in a society of their choosing. We didn’t choose the countries we were born into. Governments control land with force. It’s almost like a philosophical basis is lacking for how an entity like a government can declare that you are its subject. It’s almost like we’re lacking a natural freedom but it isn’t one that’s been widely recognized yet so people do not even realize they don’t have it. Is there any country with a legal code / constitution that is perhaps based on a completely modern, modernized, and recent philosophy of what the rules of a society should be, and on philosophical grounds alone, consider that the natural human right to freedom means you are not required to be a member of that state, and you can opt out - but furthermore that it is wrong for the country to claim complete dominion over certain areas of land. In other words, a person can opt out of their country and has the right to some land within that country. Maybe the region would still be regulated by international standards like basic human rights, but other than that they are no longer part of their state. The only example I can think of is Christiana, a district in Copenhagen, Denmark where the people declared themselves an anarchist community that is not part of any country or the EU. For some time it seemed the government respected it, until crime and other issues caused more police control, I think. So, which country comes closest to actually preserving people’s right to opt out of the state and have a natural right to at least some land?
The United States enforces laws on its citizens. This is not true and never has been in the United States or pretty much any other country. Countries exercise authority over anyone in their territory, and over their citizens even if outside their territory. Sometimes countries agree to waive their authority over a tiny number of diplomats voluntarily while retaining the right to expel them from their country, but that is the rare exception and not the rule. So, which country comes closest to actually preserving people’s right to opt out of the state and have a natural right to at least some land? There really aren't any, and the claim that this is a &quot;natural right&quot; is, at a minimum controversial and not widely held. Many countries have areas that they control which are subject to different regulations than most of the country. For example, until recently, Hong Kong was subject to different laws by different authorities than the rest of China, and there continue to be some laws generally applicable in the rest of China which are not applicable in Hong Kong. Until recently, the Panama Canal Zone was a similar example of control of territory within one country being temporarily ceded to another sovereign authority. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is a third example. Similarly, and with some of the same conceptual framework behind it, the laws that apply in places such as the Channel Islands or the Cayman Islands or Scotland, which are subordinate in legal and political theory to the same King as England is, are permitted by the King and treaties and organic statutes established with the King's symbolic approval, to have laws that are different from those that apply in England. Ultimately, this is simply a form of federalism, although when the extent that the central government's otherwise generally applicable laws can be disregarded quite completely is high, it feels like something more than mere federalism, and is often called a dependency or colonial relationship. Similarly, many countries have &quot;free ports&quot; or &quot;duty free zones&quot; in which their usual taxes don't apply. For example, the U.S. taxation regime that applies in Puerto Rico is different from the U.S. taxation regime that applies within U.S. states. But, even in these cases, there is not an individual right to opt out of laws, there is permission granted by a higher level government for a subordinate level government to adopt laws different from the generally applicable laws of the higher level government. Sometimes the alternative government is democratic, sometimes it is not. Hong Kong, for example, was not self-governing in a meaningful sense until not long before China regained control of the territory at the end of a 99 year concession to the United Kingdom. Some jurisdictions give people subject to their jurisdiction more ability to reach their own legal arrangements contrary to the default rules of law than others. For example, Delaware affords people who create limited liability companies there more authority to deviate from Delaware's default rules of law for limited liability companies than any other U.S. jurisdiction. But this is a far cry from granting people subject to Delaware's jurisdiction generally, freedom to displace mandatory rules of Delaware law in other legal domains such as criminal law. Similarly, sometimes the government will tolerate deviation from binding national laws even when they technical still apply. This has been the story of marijuana legalization in the U.S. and of prostitution legalization in Perth, Australia. But, again, this is an isolated act of tacit toleration in a single subject area, and not a general disavowal of legislative authority.
Law, as such, is not a moral or a philosophical construct. It can be based on moral constructs and often it is. And, of course, the process of writing laws is often informed by philosophy. But law as such is neither one of those. Law is a set of behaviors which are known to be acceptable to the powers &quot;that be.&quot; This maybe an unsettling idea. But it is true nonetheless. The phrase that summarizes this is &quot;any law is only as good as its enforcement mechanism.&quot; What makes it seem untrue is that in the modern tradition laws are written down. And, when there is a need to resolve doubt as to whether something is illegal or not, they are carefully considered through a deductive process. Within countries, there is little question who &quot;the powers that be&quot; happen to be. But when it comes to laws governing actions between nations, it is more complicated. Yes, treaties make it clear, ahead of time, what types of expectations exist. Predictability (even in war) allows for long-term planning. And even laws of war are usually followed because wars are fought with the expectation that at some point they will end. And predictability allows to set end-goal conditions. Notably, entities which have no clear end-goals in sight are the ones least likely to follow any laws. The idea of any group of countries sitting in court of another group of countries is mostly a political theater. There is no possibility of predictable outcomes from entities which have not made commitments to those outcomes. So whether some countries have to follow &quot;laws&quot; set out for them by other countries (or non-government entities) is largely a result of those countries or entities being in positions of power to dictate their will. This is not the same as international laws being strictly de facto. Agreed-upon restrictions and restrictions which have been dictated from the top-down, by those with more power, are de jure because they create predictable boundaries on behavior. De facto restrictions are the ones which have come to be the case without any prior agreement or fiat.
I was initially going to vote to close this as a political rather than a legal question, however, I think there is scope for separating out the two dimensions. Our society makes a distinction between children and adults by giving them different legal rights, obligations and protections. If you think about it, there are a lot of things beyond sexual activity where the law does this: voting, drinking, military service, compulsory schooling, legal culpability etc. What things are subject to legal restriction is a political distinction. Now, there is no reason politically why these laws could not have been drafted to say "children can do this, adults can do that" and leave it to the courts to decide who is a "child" and who is an "adult". Biologically and emotionally people reach maturity at different ages so this is perfectly sensible. It might even be more just. However, justice is only one thing that we require of our legal system. Among the others are certainty and efficiency. Providing a bright line based on birth date gives certainty. Not requiring the court to deal with this on a case-by-case basis increases efficiency - justice is not free. This is why jurisdictions use age as a proxy for adulthood. As to why they choose any particular age, that is a political question.
See Article VI of the Constitution: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. This seems to me that it pretty clearly establishes the Constitution as taking the place of any previous laws. In particular, Article XI of the Articles is in conflict with Article IV Section 3 of the Constitution ("New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union"). The Constitution says that Congress's action is required to create a new state, and doesn't mention any exceptions. The Constitution's terms presumably take precedence. If Canada wanted to become a state, it would have to be admitted by Congress under Article IV Section 3.
The 5th amendment of the US constitution reads: No person shall ... be deprived of life ... without due process of law and the 14th amendment reads: ... nor shall any State deprive any person of life... without due process of law In Roe v Wade the majority opinion expressly acknowledged: The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a &quot;person&quot; within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. (emphasis added) The majority in Roe v Wade then concluded: the word &quot;person,&quot; as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn In Dobbs, the majority instead stated: Today’s decision therefore does not prevent the numerous States that readily allow abortion from continuing to readily allow abortion ... all of the States may evaluate the competing interests and decide how to address this consequential issue ... There is ample evidence that the passage of these laws was instead spurred by a sincere belief that abortion kills a human being. Many judicial decisions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries made that point. [numerous citations] One may disagree with this belief (and our decision is not based on any view about when a State should regard prenatal life as having rights or legally cognizable interests) ... Our opinion is not based on any view about if and when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth. In conclusion, though it is recognized in Roe v Wade that if the unborn is considered a &quot;person&quot; then there is a &quot;right to life&quot;, no justice has indicated in an opinion (including concurring or dissenting opinions) that &quot;person&quot; in the constitution includes the unborn.
States have a general police power, meaning that they can pass laws about whatever they want unless there's a specific reason they can't. A state does not have to give special justification for why something is in the realm of stuff they can regulate; someone challenging it has to say what specific section of the Constitution it violates. For a time, the Due Process clause of the US Constitution was considered to imply freedom of contract. This time ended in the 1930s. The doctrine of a constitutionally protected freedom of contract is pretty much completely dead. A state can't abridge the freedom of contract for no reason, but that's because just about any law needs some reason to be allowed. The level of review is that the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest; this is not a very demanding level of review. Source State bar associations are given power by laws making it illegal to practice law without being a member of the bar and requiring licensed lawyers to comply with bar rules. State bars that control admission to practice are generally government agencies (specifically, agencies of the court system). When the state bar is not a government agency, attorney discipline and licensing is handled by a government agency (lawyers might have to join the bar, but the bar has to accept licensed lawyers as members; the bar's power in these cases is limited to recommendations to the courts).
Art. 25 of the Indian Constitution says (in part) Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion. But, Nothing in this article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the State from making any law regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice; providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus. The preamble does also declare that India is a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic, but this is not a clearly-enforceable article. There is no legal requirement that government action be entirely devoid of consideration for religion. What the law says is that the government must respect the rights of individuals to practice their own religion, but that does not preclude favoring a particular religion, e.g. using Hindu texts in official contexts. So far, the courts have not rules that government action must be entirely devoid of religious reference (for example the various Hindu family laws vs. Muslim family laws are not unconstitutional).
If a nation's constitution does not allow a legal means of secession, then the only possibility would be to appeal to a multi-national judicial body, but such bodies have negligible power to enforce. While numerous organizations recognise a generalized right to self-determination (for example the UN has declared that "all peoples have the right to self-determination"), this does not automatically translate into an internationally-recognized right to illegal secession. The International Court of Justice deftly avoided any finding on whether Kosovo had a right to secede, and there is no generally recognised (or denied) "right to secede". There are certain conditions under which one would have support for a claim to legal secession, for example peoples subject to decolonization, the territory was invaded / annexed after 1945, or the state flagrantly violates the rights of those peoples concerned. The "decolonization" angle has been applied to Somaliland (the premise being that the merger of British and Italian colonies into the nation of Somalia was invalid). The use of "peoples" reflect the importance of some sort of ethic division, which becomes a matter of controversy. There is reading on the topic, for example: Secession: State Practice and International Law after the Dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia Secession (Bibliography by Theodore Christakis) The Remedial Right of Secession in International Law