Jurisdiction (area)

A jurisdiction is an area with a set of laws under the control of a system of courts or government entity which are different from neighbouring areas.

Each state in a federation such as Australia, Germany and the United States forms a separate jurisdiction. However, sometimes certain laws in a federal state are uniform across the constituent states and enforced by a set of federal courts; with a result that the federal state forms a single jurisdiction for that purpose.

It is also possible for a jurisdiction to prosecute for crimes committed somewhere outside its jurisdiction, once the perpetrator returns In some cases, a citizen of another jurisdiction outside its own can be extradited to where a jurisdiction where the crime is illegal, even if it was not committed in that jurisdiction.

Unitary states are usually single jurisdictions, but the United Kingdom is a notable exception; it has three separate jurisdictions due to its three separate legal systems.

See also

State government

A state government (provincial government in Canada) is the government of a country subdivision in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonomy, or be subject to the direct control of the federal government. This relationship may be defined by a constitution.

The reference to "state" denotes country subdivisions which are officially or widely known as "states", and should not be confused with a "sovereign state". Provinces are usually divisions of unitary states. Their governments, which are also provincial governments, are not the subject of this article.

The United States and Australia are the main examples of federal systems in which the term "state" is used for the subnational components of the federation. In addition, the Canadian provinces fulfil a similar role. The term for subnational units in non-English-speaking federal countries may also often be translated as "state", e.g. States of Germany (German Länder).

State law (United States)

In the United States, state law refers to the law of each separate U.S. state.

The fifty American states are separate sovereigns, with their own state constitutions, state governments, and state courts. All states have a legislative branch which enacts state statutes, an executive branch that promulgates state regulations pursuant to statutory authorization, and a judicial branch that applies, interprets, and occasionally overturns both state statutes and regulations, as well as local ordinances. They retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the federal Constitution, federal statutes, or international treaties ratified by the federal Senate. Normally, state supreme courts are the final interpreters of state institutions and state law, unless their interpretation itself presents a federal issue, in which case a decision may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by way of a petition for writ of certiorari. State laws have dramatically diverged in the centuries since independence, to the extent that the United States cannot be regarded as one legal system as to the majority of types of law traditionally under state control, but must be regarded as 50 separate systems of tort law, family law, property law, contract law, criminal law, and so on.