Are Canadian provinces and territories administrative divisions, and what is an &quot;adminstrative division&quot;? In its current version, Wikipedia's article titled "Quebec" tells us that Quebec is Canada's largest province by area and its second-largest administrative division; only the territory of Nunavut is larger. Thus the ten provinces and three territories are here being considered "adminstrative divisions". Maybe a year or so ago I was appalled to see this Wikipedia article telling us that states in the United States are administrative divisions of the country, and I changed it. In the U.S. there were formerly "organized incorporated territories" (and maybe the District of Columbia could still be considered one of those?). These I take to have been administrative divisions of the country. Congress passed an "organic act" for each such territory that said the government in this territory shall be organized in thus-and-such manner. During the existence of such a territory, if it was decided to change the term served by the governor from two years to fours year, or make some other change, the change was enacted by Congress, not by the voters in the territory. The constitution of a state, by contrast, is drafted by politicians in that state and submitted for the approval of the voters, and any changes are made by popular vote; there is no involvement of Congress or anything at the federal level. Thus states are not administrative divisions of the federal government. Counties, in those states where they exist (or parishes in Louisiana or boroughs in Alaska), are administrative divisions of the state. Thus it seems appropriate that in the U.S., states get "admitted" by Congress whereas territories get "organized" by Congress. However, in Canada, if I'm not mistaken, both provinces and territories get "admitted". So Is this understanding of the concept of "administrative division" right? Is the article about Quebec right?
&quot;Administrative division&quot; is a sub-national area that exists for the purpose of administration - it is context dependent and is independent of the area having self-governance or legal certainty or continuity. That is, they may be large or small, geographically contiguous or not, permanent or temporary, democratic or non-democratic, self-governing or externally administered etc. The states and territories of the US can be considered administrative divisions. Counties and their equivalents are administrative divisions. Cites, towns, villages and other types of municipalities are also administrative divisions. Australia has states and territories. Some states have counties. Some states have counties divided into parishes. All states have local governments (cities, municipalities and shires) whose boundaries do not relate to counties or parishes. Some governments form larger administrative divisions for certain purposes (e.g. WSROC - Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority). All of these are administrative divisions.
Are there any restrictions on the taxes or duties a U.S. state can levy? Yes. For starters, states may not use taxes or other means to impede the federal government in its constitutional exercises of power. This precedent stems from a case called McCulloch v. Maryland from 1819. In 1816, Congress established the Second Bank of the United States. Many states were not fans of this action. One of them, Maryland, established a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland. When the head of the Baltimore branch of the bank refused to pay the tax, litigation commenced and it was eventually appealed to the Supreme Court. SCOTUS held that the Constitution grants implied powers to Congress that allow Congress to implement a national government using its express powers and state action may not interfere with such exercise of power. Taxation, of course, is just one way a state may attempt to interfere with federal power. Can states impose duties on goods that merely transit their territory? Generally no. The Commerce Clause bars states from implementing taxes that discriminate against interstate commerce or that put burdens on it by subjecting commercial activities to numerous or unfair taxation. The Due Process Clause complements this concept by requiring there be a definitive link between a state and the person, property, or transaction which it seeks to tax. This goes back to the SCOTUS decision in Southern Pacific Co. v. Arizona where the state enacted a law barring trains from operating in the state with more than 14 or 70 passenger or freight cars, respectively. The Court held that this was a substantial burden on interstate commerce because trains would need to be broken up before they passed through AZ. Also, you couldn't just stop on the tracks and "break up" the trains, so that had to be done at a stop before getting to AZ. The court determined that with this law, AZ effectively controlled the length of trains as far from its borders as El Paso and Los Angeles. The alternative was to operate all trains at the lowest level allowable by any state, which would lead to AZ dictating train lengths around the country. In determining the validity of the law or regulation, a court uses a balancing test to compare the burden on interstate commerce with the importance of the state interest (the AZ law was purportedly for safety reasons).
A variant of this question is addressed in Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, with recording taking place in a call between a 1-party and an all-party jurisdiction (California and Georgia). The CA Supreme court ruled in favor of California as the &quot;most-interested&quot; jurisdiction, which if applied to your hypothetical would favor Florida as the most-interested jurisdiction. There would be a true conflict in the law of the two jurisdictions, and (with substitution of names of jurisdictions) as a general matter, the failure to apply California→Florida law in this context would impair California's→Florida's interest in protecting the degree of privacy afforded to California→Florida residents by California→Florida law more severely than the application of California law would impair any interests of the State of Georgia→Nation of Canada The thing is, the person in Florida is violating Florida law by recording, so the cross-jurisdictional issue would only favor the person being recorded in Florida. The Florida statute makes no mention of where the person being recorded is, so there exception to the effect that the law does not apply when the person being recorded is outside of Florida. The Florida person broke Florida law.
Does this mean that all four of the above are &quot;equipotent&quot;? No. The inclusion of these foundational documents in the Front Matter of the United States Code does not indicate anything regarding their legal status. It is more of a political statement, as a preamble to all laws in today's sovereign federal state, describing the foundation of the United States of America and its constitutional order. The only constitutional law in force today in the U.S. is the Constitution for the United States of America, beginning with We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. and the subsequent amendments. The ratification of the Constitution replaced any previous constitutional orders in effect between the States. A new government was created by the Constitution and replaced the old one under the Articles of the Confederation: Both Governments could not be understood to exist at the same time. The New Government did not commence until the old Government expired. It is apparent that the government did not commence on the Constitution being ratified by the ninth State; for these ratifications were to be reported to Congress, whose continuing existence was recognized by the Convention, and who were requested to continue to exercise their powers for the purpose of bringing the new Government into operation. In fact, Congress did continue to act as a Government until it dissolved on the 1st of November, by the successive disappearance of its Members. It existed potentially until the 2d of March, the day proceeding that on which the Members of the new Congress were directed to assemble. Owings v. Speed The States abandoned their old agreement (the Articles of Confederation) and subjected themselves to the new Constitution. Of course, the other documents remain historically very significant and may shine lights on the interpretation of the present Constitution, for example, in Texas v. White, the reference made to the concept of &quot;perpetual union&quot; found in the Articles. The Declaration of Independence is not so much a legal document per se but a declaration of the existence of the States sovereign from the British Crown; but such sovereignty is not a result from the declaration, but from the acts of war. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, while remaining in effect under the Constitution by Acts of (the new) Congress, is in any case spent as its territorial extent is extinguished by the establishment and admission of states, who enjoy equal status under the Constitution. See for example, Permoli v. Municipality No. 1 of the City of New Orleans and Strader v. Graham.
Any court from a municipal traffic court on up can declare a law unconstitutional and the U.S. Supreme Court is almost never the court that does so in the first instance. Also, while the jurisdiction stripping law that you suggest might be unconstitutional, it is not obviously unconstitutional. The relevant language is in Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution (this has been modified by the 11th Amendment in ways that are not pertinent to the issue at hand): The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;-- to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. The key language being the language in bold, who scope and limitations are the subject of hot debate in legal scholarship. For example, both military tribunal law for non-soldiers and the collateral review of death sentences implicate this provision. An issue related to U.S. Supreme Court jurisdiction over military court-martial court composition will be heard this year in oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. There is also debate over whether the jurisdiction of every single federal court can be removed from a matter within the judicial power of the United States. In that regard, keep in mind that the United States federal court system did not have direct appeals of criminal convictions at all until the 1890s, although you could challenge, for example, the jurisdiction of a criminal court over your case with a writ of habeas corpus which is a collateral attack on a conviction in a separate civil lawsuit formally directed at your prison warden. That being said, as far as I know, a law is considered in effect until declared unconstitutional. It is illegal to break an unconstitutional law, until declared so. You are wrong. A law that is unconstitutional on its face is, in terms of legal theory, unconstitutional immediately upon enactment and a court simply acknowledges that fact. It is not illegal to break an unconstitutional law even if no court has yet declared it to be unconstitutional (in U.S. jurisprudence). A law that is unconstitutional as applied is unconstitutional in application at the moment it is applied unconstitutionally, and again, a court merely acknowledges that fact.
The new law wins. That's rather the point of passing a new law-- the legislature wants to change the current law of the land whether that is based on statutes or court rulings. Of course, there are caveats. Prior judicial rulings may have relied on an interpretation of a source of law that supersedes the legislature in question (i.e. based on an interpretation of the state or federal Constitution or based on a federal law that supersedes the state law). In that case the new law would be found unconstitutional or ignored. Or the new law might have an ambiguous interaction with current law that courts would have to resolve. The new law might clearly make X illegal but there may be legitimate questions about whether it intended to make previously legal action Y illegal as well. It is, after all, very difficult to write a law that covers every possible fact pattern one would encounter in the real world.
In National Federation Of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the court addressed the matter of withholding funding, with respect to obligatory expansion of Medicaid, where ACA required states to expand Medicaid coverage, or lose all federal Medicaid funds. The effect, as described in the ruling was "[t]he threatened loss of over 10 percent of a State’s overall budget", which constitutes "economic dragooning that leaves the States with no real option but to acquiesce in the Medicaid expansion", and "The Medicaid expansion thus violates the Constitution by threatening States with the loss of their existing Medicaid funding if they decline to comply with the expansion". A law which withholds more than Medicaid funding would therefore clearly be at least as coercive as ACA. It is some interest that the ACA ruling put specific comparative numbers on the effect of the highway funding law underlying SD v. Dole, which they decided was "less than a half a percent" of the state budget. In contrast, in the case of Medicaid funding, their estimate was that Medicaid costs are about 20% of a state's budget, and the federal government pays 50%-80% of that. That means, picking low numbers, the effect of withholding Medicaid funding would be about 10% of a state's budget. The line between persuasion and coercion then seems to lie between .5% and 10%. The presumably introduced bill is here, for reference. The core paragraph is (a) None of the funds made available in any Act may be used to make payments to any unit of local government that permits individuals who are not citizens of the United States to vote in elections for State or local office. However, the introductory clause identifies the purpose as being To prohibit Federal payments to a unit of local government that allows individuals who are not citizens of the United States to vote in elections for State or local office, and for other purposes. The substantial difference is that propositions are not offices: the bill introduces ambiguity in legislative intent (the words of the statute say one thing, the potentially enforceable sections introduced into US Code say something else). The bill does not define "unit of local government", so we could search for existing definitions of that term. 31 USC 6701: primarily "a county, township, city, or political subdivision of a county, township, or city, that is a unit of general local government as determined by the Secretary of Commerce for general statistical purposes" (I don't think school, fire, hospital and water districts count). Alternatively 42 USC 12746: a city, town, township, county, parish, village, or other general purpose political subdivision of a State; the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, the Marshall Islands, or a general purpose political subdivision thereof; a consortium of such political subdivisions recognized by the Secretary [HUD] in accordance with section 12746(2) of this title; and any agency or instrumentality thereof that is established pursuant to legislation and designated by the chief executive to act on behalf of the jurisdiction with regard to provisions of this Act. To get the desired effect, the sponsor wants the definition in 2 CFR 200.64, which includes school districts (and that chunk is about federal grants, thus apt for the bill). The statutory authority for this interpretation is 31 USC 503.
Federal countries usually define the separation (and sometimes sharing) of legislative competencies in their constitutions. There will also usually be a "default" case for if the competency is not explicitly defined in the constitution. For example, in the United States, the default is to give legislative power to the individual states via the Tenth Amendment. If criminal law is left to the sub-national entities, then the nation can usually still enact a penal code with respect to its competencies (again, the U.S. is a good example). So, I decided to make this a mini-research project by checking the countries Wikipedia lists as federations. I wasn't able to find an explicit statement as to whether there were competing penal codes in most cases, but was able to find in which level of government the constitution placed criminal law. In some cases where there are "competing" penal codes, the constitution specified which level has supremacy, making for less "competition". Without further ado, here's what I've been able to find. Links are either to an appropriate Wikipedia page, or the part of the applicable constitution dividing the legislative competencies. Take these with a grain of salt. Competing penal codes Australia Bosnia and Herzegovina Ethiopia India Iraq Mexico Nigeria Pakistan Sudan United States Single national penal code Austria Brazil Canada Comoros Germany Malaysia Nepal Russia Switzerland Venezuela Unclear Argentina Belgium Micronesia St. Kitts and Nevis Somalia South Sudan United Arab Emirates