State Governments Of The United States
State governments in the United States are those republics formed by citizens in the jurisdiction thereof as provided by the United States Constitution; with the original 13 states forming the first Articles of Confederation, and later the aforementioned Constitution. Within the U.S. constitution are provisions as to the formation of new states within the Union.
Structured in accordance with state law (including state constitutions and state statutes), state governments share the same structural model as the federal system, with three branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial.
Under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, all governmental powers not granted to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved for the states or to the people.
The governments of the 13 colonies that formed the original union under the Constitution trace their history back to the royal charters which established them during the era of colonialism. Most other states were organized as federal territories or parts of other states before forming their governments and requesting admittance into the union. Notable exceptions are Texas and Hawaii, which were sovereign nations before joining the union.
Read more about State Governments Of The United States: Legislatures, Executive, Judiciary, Offices
Famous quotes containing the words the united states, united states, state, governments, united and/or states:
“To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He believes without reservation that Kentucky is the garden spot of the world, and is ready to dispute with anyone who questions his claim. In his enthusiasm for his State he compares with the Methodist preacher whom Timothy Flint heard tell a congregation that “Heaven is a Kentucky of a place.””
—For the State of Kentucky, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men ... ours began, by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant wiser; and all better, and happier together.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet this is his very being.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)