United States Department of the Interior

On March 3, 1849, the last day of the 30th Congress, a bill was passed to create the U.S. Department of the Interior to take charge of the internal affairs of United States territory. The Interior Department has a wide range of responsibilities (which include the regulation of territorial governments, the basic responsibilities for public lands, and other various duties).

In contrast to similarly named Departments in other countries, the United States Department of the Interior is not responsible for local government or for civil administration except in the cases of Indian reservations, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and island dependencies, through the Office of Insular Affairs (OIA).

States of the United States

Main article: U.S. state

At the Declaration of Independence, the United States consisted of 13 states, former colonies of the United Kingdom. In the following years, the number of states has grown steadily due to expansion to the west, conquest and purchase of lands by the American government, and division of existing states to the current number of 50 United States:

Map of United States with state border lines. Note that Alaska and Hawaii are shown at different scales, and that the Aleutian Islandsand the uninhabited northwestern Hawaiian Islands are omitted from this map.

The relationship between the state and national governments is rather complex, because of the country's federal system. Under United States law, states are considered sovereign entities, meaning that the power of the states is considered to come directly from the people within the states rather than from the federal government. The federal government of the United States was created when sovereign states delegated some of their sovereignty to one central government. The sovereignty they delegated, however, was not complete. The logical extension of this delegation is that the federal government enjoys limited sovereignty, and the states retain whatever sovereignty they never delegated to the federal government. Federal law overrides state law in the areas in which the federal government is empowered to act, but the powers of the federal government are subject to the limited sovereignty delegated by the Constitution of the United States. (The Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution declares that the powers not delegated to the federal government are retained by the states, but this arguably is mere truism.)

The American Civil War and Texas v. White established that states do not have the right to secede, and under the Constitution of the United States, and they are not allowed to conduct foreign policy.

The United States–Canadian border is the longest undefended political boundary in the world. The 50 states are divided into distinct sections:

the "continental United States", also known as "the Lower 48" and more accurately termed the conterminous, coterminous, or contiguous United States

Alaska, an exclave, which is physically connected only to Canada

the archipelago of Hawaii, in the central Pacific Ocean.

The United States also holds several other territories, districts, and possessions, notably the federal district of the District of Columbia, which contains the nation's capital city of Washington, and several overseas insular areas, the most significant of which are American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. Islands gained by the United States in the war against Spain at the turn of the 20th century were no longer to be considered foreign territory; on the other hand, the United States Supreme Court declared that they were not automatically covered by the Constitution and that it was up to the United States Congress to decide what portions of the Constitution, if any, applied to them. The only remaining exception is Palmyra Atoll, the United States's only incorporated territory; it is unorganized and uninhabited.

The United States Navy has held a base at a portion of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since 1898. The United States government possesses a lease to this land, which only mutual agreement or United States abandonment of the area can terminate. The present Cuban government of Fidel Castro disputes this arrangement, claiming Cuba was not truly sovereign at the time of the signing. The United States argues this point is moot because Cuba apparently ratified the lease post-revolution, and with full sovereignty, when it cashed one rent check in accordance with the disputed treaty.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 676