I had a thought the other day in relation to how impossible it is for a large country to make everyone happy with broad policies. There are big differences in opinions, values, economics, and cultures across a population. What one city, county, province, etc prefers for policy seems to be universally be overridden by “higher level” governance levels going to the top if they so choose. Are there any countries where lower level, more specific jurisdictions get to set policy overrides instead of vice versa? Like, a place where nationwide laws are defaults, but smaller hierarchies can pass laws to supercede the higher defaults?
If a law can be ignored, its merely a suggestion. If a sub-national jurisdiction could just overrule the national government, then the sub-national government is essentially a sovereign nation.
Think of like the UN and “International Laws”, everyone just ignores those. Anything passed by the UN doesn’t matter. Russia continue to invade Ukraine; Israel continues to genocide Gaza; “UN Resolutions” are just “Strongly Worded Letters”
Such ideas are a core principle of European Union law:
Not true, member states cannot override EU directives, which is what the question asks. The subsidiarity is basically that if there’s no EU rule for <insert thing>, the national law applies.
Basically what US has, except EU has less laws (and intends to keep it that way).
They can’t on paper but they actually do it all the time
I mean, yeah, but if you need to go to various legal hacks for help, it’s not exactly a feature of the system.
Edit: If anyone’s interested in a legal hack my country came up with, when gun ownership was being banned for individuals, we put it in our constitution - EU law is above local laws, but not above constitution.
a place where nationwide laws are defaults, but smaller hierarchies can pass laws to supercede the higher defaults?
Hm… that kinda doesn’t seem too useful, no? What would even be the point of the higher government if you can just completely ignore them locally?
Defense, foreign relations, cross-jurisdiction crime, the usual things. But civil law and local criminal policy overridden locally, if voters desire?
I guess I’m thinking about a situation where let’s say one region wants to trade with some other country, and another doesn’t like that, then tough luck. Or same sex marriage, vehicle emissions rules, etc. That sort of thing. Seems like in places such as the US, voters from the other side of the country can override what your local citizens want if they get enough other external voters to side with them.
Maybe something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation previously in the US?
the Congress observed them as it conducted business during the American Revolution (defense), directing the Revolutionary War effort, conducting diplomacy with foreign states (foreign relations), addressing territorial issues (cross-jurisdiction crime)
You’re probably looking for federal systems like Germany, USA, Switzerland
In these federal system such as the US, federal law is supreme and overrides sub-national laws. Roe V Wade, although it wasn’t technically a law, carried the weight of a law and legalized abortion nationwide. No state could just outright ban abortion, at least not until Dobbs decision reversed the previous Roe decision. Same with Gay Marriage, its now a federal law and states cannot override that.
For those that you could override, say, minimum wage: That you’re technically not overriding. The Federal minimum is still $7.25/hour, a state law making their state $15/hour does not contradict that at all; The federal law did not put a limit on states passing their own laws.
This is not how that works in all federal systems.
In most of them the things the federal/regional governments can do are mutually exclusive. If a region has the attributions over, say, education policy, the central government can’t override that with a law, it requires a constitutional change to do so. In some cases, the central government gets authority in those areas only if the regional government doesn’t take it.
And the other way around it’s the same thing. A region can’t start making choices on defense, for instance.
When those things are in conflict the federal tier doesn’t automatically override anything, it’s a constitutional crisis and the higher constitutional courts have to resolve which law is actually applicable. They are on equal footing. Otherwise it’s not a federal state, it’s devolved powers like in the UK, which are fundamentally different.
