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The following is a list of the current constitutions of the states in the United States. Each entry shows the ordinal number of the current constitution, the official name of the current constitution, the date on which the current constitution took effect, and the estimated length of the current constitution.
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Defunct state constitutions of the United States (25 P) Members of U.S. state constitutional conventions (5 C, 4 P) U.S. state constitutional amendments (8 C, 84 P)
Most states use a single official code divided into numbered titles. Pennsylvania's official codification is still in progress. California, New York, and Texas use separate subject-specific codes (or in New York's case, "Consolidated Laws") which must be separately cited by name.
Each state is itself a sovereign entity, and as such, reserves the right to organize in any way (within the above stated parameter) deemed appropriate by its people. As a result, while the governments of the various states share many similar features, they often vary greatly with regard to form and substance. No two state governments are identical.
The law of most of the states is based on the common law of England; the notable exception is Louisiana, whose civil law is largely based upon French and Spanish law.The passage of time has led to state courts and legislatures expanding, overruling, or modifying the common law; as a result, the laws of any given state invariably differ from the laws of its sister states.
The following table is a list of all 50 states and their respective dates of statehood. The first 13 became states in July 1776 upon agreeing to the United States Declaration of Independence, and each joined the first Union of states between 1777 and 1781, upon ratifying the Articles of Confederation, its first constitution. [6]
While each of the state governments within the United States holds legal and administrative jurisdiction within its bounds, [3] they are not sovereign in the Westphalian sense in international law which says that each state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non ...