United States
In the United States, the term may generally refers to legislation creating a program or agency. For example, the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act is the enabling act for the US Food and Drug Administration.
Formerly, the term was used in relation to the formation of a new U.S. state; i.e., legislation passed by Congress authorizing the people of a territory to frame a constitution; this act also lays down the requirements that must be met as a prerequisite to statehood. These acts were usually titled "An Enabling Act for a State of (Name)". These include the following:
- Enabling Act of 1802, for the formation of Ohio from the Northwest Territory
- Enabling Act of 1889, for the formation of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington
- Enabling Act of 1906 for the formation of Oklahoma from Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory
- Enabling Act of 1910, for the admission of Arizona and New Mexico
Read more about this topic: Enabling Act
Famous quotes related to united states:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.”
—Edna Ferber (1887–1968)
“I do not know that the United States can save civilization but at least by our example we can make people think and give them the opportunity of saving themselves. The trouble is that the people of Germany, Italy and Japan are not given the privilege of thinking.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)