Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The United States of America is a federal republic [1] consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and various minor islands. [2] [3] Both the states and the United States as a whole are each sovereign jurisdictions. [4]
1855 J. H. Colton Company map of Virginia that predates the West Virginia partition by seven years.. Numerous state partition proposals have been put forward since the 1776 establishment of the United States that would partition an existing U.S. state or states so that a particular region might either join another state or create a new state.
States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local governmental authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state, and states also create other local governments. States, unlike U.S. territories, possess many powers and rights under the United States Constitution.
This form of limited sovereignty (commonly called "dual sovereignty" or "separate sovereigns" in the language of constitutional law) is derived from the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States ...
Among the 50 states, 44 are partitioned entirely into counties, with no county equivalents. Louisiana is instead divided into 64 equivalent parishes, while Alaska is divided into 19 equivalent boroughs and 11 sparsely populated census areas, the latter also known collectively as the unorganized borough.
Divided government in Washington will push even more of the nation's fiercest political fights to the states. The divided states of America: Florida, California, and the future of political ...
This is a list of proposed state mergers, including both current and historical proposals originating from sovereign states or organizations.The entities listed below differ from separatist movements in that they would form as a merger or union of two or more existing states, territories, colonies or other regions, becoming either a federation, confederation or other type of unified sovereign ...
List of sovereign states; List of political and geographic subdivisions by total area, comparing continents, countries, and first-level administrative country subdivisions. List of first-level administrative divisions by population; List of FIPS region codes in FIPS 10-4, withdrawn from the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) in 2008