How the United States works is a mystery to Europeans (but also to Americans)
James Hansen's diplomatic note
The 'federal' system of the United States is a mystery to Europeans, as it is to many Americans as well. It is easy to forget that the country was born as a federation of single independent 'states' – and that these still maintain a good degree of sovereignty. Thus, in the US there is no registry, no 'criminal record', no national driving license – and the country has a Congress that is not a Parliament and an 'executive' President who is not a Prime Minister.
The American constitutional functioning is somewhat mysterious even for foreign correspondents in the country. This is why what you have read or heard about the US Supreme Court's alleged abolition of the 'constitutional right' to abortion is at least misleading. It was never a 'right' named in the US Constitution – a document from 1789.
The well-known decision of the Supreme Court in the case of 'Roe v. Wade 'of 1973 had the effect of liberalizing abortion because – according to the interpretation of the Court at the time – it effectively transferred the competence on the subject from the individual States to the Federal Government, which then, in order not to get involved in a terrible mess, decided not to take other measures. The recent decision therefore does not prohibit abortion. Rather, it returns the issue to individual states, of which a minority is in favor and the others are against.
The tension between federal power and the sovereignty of individual states is a constant in American national political contention. It is, at least in a broad sense, one of the great issues that feeds the ideological division between the Democrats, with a 'federal' tendency, and the Republicans, who tend to be equally inclined to defend the sovereignty of states. The Supreme Court, as it is constituted, is instead 'asynchronous' with regard to the trend of daily politics. Play on a different table …
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-funzionano-gli-stati-uniti-e-un-mistero-per-gli-europei-ma-anche-per-gli-americani/ on Sun, 14 Aug 2022 05:17:25 +0000.