Law and Government
Kentucky is one of four U.S. states to officially use the term commonwealth. The term was used for Kentucky as it had also been used by Virginia, from which Kentucky was created. The term has no particular significance in its meaning and was chosen to emphasize the distinction from the status of royal colonies as a place governed for the general welfare of the populace.
The commonwealth term was used in citizen petitions submitted between 1786 and 1792 for the creation of the state, and in the Kentucky Constitution adopted in 1850. It was also used in the title of a history of the state that was published in 1834 and was used in various places within that book in references to Virginia and Kentucky. The other two states officially called "commonwealths" are Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
Kentucky is one of only five states that elects its state officials in odd-numbered years (the others being Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia). Kentucky holds elections for these offices every 4 years in the years preceding Presidential election years. Thus, Kentucky held gubernatorial elections in 2003, 2007, and 2011.
See also: List of Governors of Kentucky, Kentucky Senate, and Kentucky House of RepresentativesRead more about this topic: Politics Of Kentucky
Famous quotes containing the words law and, law and/or government:
““Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.””
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 22:36-40.
“Who does not know history’s first law to be that an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth? And its second that he must make bold to tell the whole truth? That there must be no suggestion of partiality anywhere in his writings? Nor of malice?”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature—a type nowhere at present existing.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)