I think it’s even better to compare the US with other federated nations - Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil, India, Argentina etc. as they’re all constitutional nations of federated states with separations of power between the federation and the individual states.
Comment on Wikimedia Foundation calls on US Supreme Court to strike laws that threaten Wikipedia
bitcrafter@programming.dev 1 year agoIf you are going to compare the United States to other political entities, I think that the better thing to compare it to is the European Union rather than other countries, because like the EU the US was formed from the union of sovereign member states and that is why it is designed the way that it is (for better or worse).
Given that, I have an honest question asked out of ignorance: Does the EU have more power over its member states than the United States does? (I am not super-familiar with it, so the answer may very well be yes.)
Instigate@aussie.zone 1 year ago
SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 1 year ago
It has less. The EU is mostly an economic union. It can regulate trade and consumer rights, but not much else. Countries must adhere to the European Declaration of Human Rights and some other conditions to join the Union (like being a democracy or having a stable economy), but the EU cannot enforce these rules after the fact; see Hungary which became a near-dictatorship after joining, or France which is regularly sentenced for human rights violations and simply pays the fine instead of changing anything.
EU laws cannot supercede a country’s constitution. If they clash, the country must - by EU rules - change its constitution, but not doing so carries almost no consequence.