Federal Sovereignty

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-138
Author(s):  
Gregory Ablavsky
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
The Other ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
Federal Control ◽  
Secretary Of War

In the territories, the federal government confronted what it regarded as endemic violence between Natives and U.S. citizens based on long-standing racial animosity. At the urging of Secretary of War Henry Knox, the federal government sought to establish itself as a neutral arbiter between both sides, a vision of what the chapter calls federal sovereignty expressed in the Trade and Intercourse Acts. These laws sought to distinguish and separate “Indian country” from “ordinary jurisdiction,” and they established a federal criminal regime to punish both Natives and U.S. citizens who committed crimes against the other, in an effort to replace practices of retaliation. Yet this effort to establish federal sovereignty largely failed. In part, federal officials misunderstood territorial realities, where Natives and whites were entangled by economic and social relationships that could not be easily divided. But they also misunderstood the jurisdictional and institutional limitations within federal law. In particular, their approach converted the question of justice for Natives into a debate over the scope of federal authority in the territories, in which territorial citizens strongly resisted what they regarded as heavy-handed federal control.

Equal Footing

2021 ◽  
pp. 201-230
Author(s):  
Gregory Ablavsky
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Cherokee Nation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Equal Footing ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
Northwest Territory ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
First Time

In 1796, the Southwest Territory became the first U.S. territory to become a state, joining the union as Tennessee. This new state promptly used its newfound status as a sovereign on “equal footing” with existing states to challenge the persistence of federal authority, especially over land and Indian affairs. A series of collisions followed: over ownership of the public domain; over William Blount’s odd scheme to use his supposed influence in Indian country to challenge federal power; and, above all, over the federal government’s attempt to survey the boundary of the Cherokee Nation, which threatened to dispossess white land claimants. Ultimately, the federal government preserved its formal authority even as it gave Tennessee what it wanted—a seemingly Pyrrhic victory that had important precedential consequences. In particular, when part of the Northwest Territory sought to become the new state of Ohio in 1802, the federal government sought to protect its authority. Most importantly, it decided for the first time to attach conditions to the new state’s admission that guaranteed federal land ownership, a practice that quickly became a constitutional norm; the new state also tacitly accepted continued federal authority over the state’s Native peoples. The result was that the federal government’s power to adjudicate property and jurisdictional conflicts survived despite state challenge; in the process, the federal government ironically became the most visible defender of the earlier, multipolar order against these states’ assaults.

Laws of War and Peace

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-168
Author(s):  
Gregory Ablavsky
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
Northwest Territory ◽  
Indian War ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Legitimate Violence ◽  
Culture Of Violence

Alongside individual murders and crimes, the federal government also confronted in the territories a long-standing borderlands law governing organized violence. Both Natives and whites there conducted larger-scale, often brutal expeditions against each other, often with little or no formal authorization from their ostensible governments. The federal government sought to replace this seemingly pathological culture of violence by imposing a definition of war drawn from the newly adopted U.S. Constitution that made the federal government, and particularly Congress, the sole arbiter and source of legitimate violence against Native nations. The effects of this federal assertion of supremacy differed in the two territories. In the Northwest Territory, the conflict known as the Northwest Indian War expanded earlier practices of borderlands violence under federal auspices. Citizens of the Southwest Territory demanded the same, and nearly got it, in what this chapter terms the war-that-nearly-was. What actually followed in the Southwest Territory instead was an intense, polyvocal legal contest between territorial citizens and officials, Congress, the Washington administration, and the Creek, Cherokee, and Chickasaw Nations over the meaning of the categories of war and peace. Yet again, federal officials failed to establish federal supremacy, but they did succeed in insinuating federal law into territorial life and Indian country, including disputes between Native nations.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Gregory Ablavsky
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Northwest Ordinance ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
Alternate Model ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The U.S

This introduction outlines the central argument of Federal Ground. Federal authority in the Northwest and Southwest Territories, the book contends, stemmed less from foundational texts like the Northwest Ordinance than from the demands of territorial residents, who looked on the federal government not as an institution but as a resource and successfully pushed it to serve their ends. The introduction explores the contrast between the formal, nearly unchecked authority that the U.S. Constitution granted the federal government in the territories and the reality that these supposed territories were Native homelands and borderlands where imperial powers had come and gone with little change in control. It then grapples with the amorphous nature of federal government in the territories, divided among cabinet officials, local territorial officers, and key intermediaries like Governors Arthur St. Clair and William Blount, and recounts how these diverse officials believed themselves constrained to try to understand the territories’ inhabitants. It also explores the difficult question of how to measure federal state power in the early republic, contrasting the fiscal-military state with the alternate model of an adjudicatory state, in which territorial citizens turned to federal law to claim rights. It notes the benefits of considering the two territories together and previews the individual chapters and their arguments.

Consociation as a Guarantee for the Protection of Minority Rights in Ethiopia

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belachew Girma Degefie
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
Municipal Level ◽  
Law Making

The Constitution of Ethiopia takes diversity seriously as a response to the country’s history. On the other hand, the Constitution does not protect minority groups to the extent that it promised in its Preamble, as has been observed for many years. This necessitates a system that at best fosters the interests of minorities and thereby contributes to establishing a legitimate government. This article recommends that a consociational arrangement protects minorities by enabling them to exercise autonomy at the municipal level and be represented in the federal government, thereby allowing them to participate in the federal law-making process. Executive power sharing allows ethnic groups to participate in the federal executive and feel that they are part of the government. Finally, minority veto allows them to veto laws that affect their vital interests such as language rights.

Federal Ground

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Ablavsky
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Northwest Ordinance ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
New States ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Federal Jurisdiction ◽  
The Right

Federal Ground depicts the haphazard and unplanned growth of federal authority in the Northwest and Southwest Territories, the first U.S. territories established under the new territorial system. The nation’s foundational documents, particularly the U.S. Constitution and the Northwest Ordinance, placed these territories under sole federal jurisdiction and established federal officials to govern them. But, for all their paper authority, these officials rarely controlled events or dictated outcomes. In practice, power in these contested borderlands rested with the regions’ preexisting inhabitants—diverse Native peoples, French villagers, and Anglo-American settlers. These residents nonetheless turned to the new federal government to claim ownership, jurisdiction, protection, and federal money, seeking to obtain rights under federal law. Two areas of governance proved particularly central: contests over property, where plural sources of title created conflicting land claims, and struggles over the right to use violence, in which customary borderlands practice intersected with the federal government’s effort to establish a monopoly on force. Over time, as federal officials improvised ad hoc, largely extrajudicial methods to arbitrate residents’ claims, they slowly insinuated federal authority deeper into territorial life. This authority survived even after the former territories became Ohio and Tennessee: although new states spoke a language of equal footing and autonomy, statehood actually offered former territorial citizens the most effective way yet to make claims on the federal government. The federal government, in short, still could not always prescribe the result in the territories, but it set the terms and language of debate—authority that became the foundation for later, more familiar and bureaucratic incarnations of federal power.

scholarly journals Analysis of the Effectiveness of E-Government in the Federal Government of Nigeria

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Robert A. Dibie ◽  
Maryam O. Quadri
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Negative Correlation ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Government Relations ◽  
Professional Journals ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
Government Websites ◽  
The Government

This paper examines the nature, impact, effectiveness and barriers of e-government in the Federal Government of Nigeria. It also explores the extent to which e-government has facilitated a better relationship between citizens and the federal government of Nigeria. It argues that the utilization of technologies such as internet, email, websites, and social media have yet to effectively connect citizens, and the government. As a result, the federal government of Nigeria has not fully adopted the new e-government approaches to improve its services. The paper uses data derived from questionnaire survey administered to 3,000 Nigerian citizens including federal government staff in Abuja, Lagos and some state capitals in Nigeria., Interviews of 300 federal officials and stakeholders were conducted. The secondary data consisted of the review of related government reports, government websites, academic and professional journals. Data were analyzed to determine the impacts of e-governance in the federal government. The conceptual framework is based on stakeholders’ theory, and an integrated e-government model. The findings suggest that on one hand there is a negative correlation between the e-governance initiatives and federal government efficient service delivery in Nigeria. On the other hand, there is also a negative correlation between citizens and federal government relations in the country. Some challenges preventing the adoption of proactive e-governance practices were identified and recommendations for appropriate policies that could address the current impediments were offered.

scholarly journals Violence in social memory intimate beliefs regarding operation storm in the Croatian and Serbian publics

2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-68
Author(s):  
Gordana Djeric
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Silence Suppression ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The One ◽  
Performance Character ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Manipulation Strategy

This text is part of a research conducted under the working title "What do we talk about when we are silent and what are we silent about when we are talking? - premises for the anthropology of silence about the nearest past." In the first part the author investigates the meaning of silence in the Croatian and Serbian press right before and during Croatia's Operation Storm. The ratio between silence, suppression of information and forgetting, on the one hand, and social memory, on the other, has been elaborated in the final part of the text by following reports about the anniversaries of Operation Storm in both Croatian and Serbian publics. The starting point lies in the belief that the phenomenon of silence (and suppression of information), being an immanent part of each discourse, represents an important factor in the creation of social relationships and system of value models, that it has important communication and cognitive functions and that the performance character lies in its essence. In short, silence makes it possible to form the prevailing image about this event, even if it does not construct it indirectly - through speech. The author has elaborated on the meaning of silence in the context of Operation Storm partly because studies about the breakup of Yugoslavia frequently mention silence as a manipulation strategy employed by some of the sides in the conflict (or analysts dealing with Yugoslav topics), while not a single study systematically investigates the semantic of silence and suppression of information in these conflicts. Most importantly, taking into account the frequency of direct silence in the newspaper discourse and rhetoric strategies that point at silence indirectly from the context and discourse, the author focuses on the relationship between the event (situation) and silence. In order to shed light on the way in which Operation Storm is remembered, i.e. forgotten, in the stakeholders' publics and political imageries, she follows the dailies - Vecernje Novosti Politika, Danas (Belgrade) - Vecernji List, Jutarnji List, Magazin supplement of the Jutarnji List (Zagreb), as well as texts about Operation Storm in weeklies such as the NIN and Vreme of Belgrade or Globus of Zagreb in the period between August 2, 1995 and mid-August 2006.

Fighting Hunger, Fearing Violence after the Revolutionary War

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-135
Author(s):  
Rachel B. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Revolutionary War ◽  
Old Northwest ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
The Government ◽  
Northwest Region

This chapter assesses how, after the Revolutionary War, Native Americans increased their authority by working with the U.S. government to circumvent hunger. The federal government failed to win power because it cost so much to distribute food aid, and the government was not yet powerful enough to refuse to do so. Postwar Indian country was a place of simultaneous resilience and desolation; although burned villages and scattered tribes provide plentiful evidence of disruption, there were numerous sites where Indian power waxed, at least until the mid-1790s. Approaches to Indian affairs, which included food policy, varied from state to state and evolved in three separate regions in the 1780s and 1790s: the southern states of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia; the mid-Atlantic states of New York and Pennsylvania; and the old northwest region of the Ohio Valley. Food negotiations reveal similarities between federal and state approaches, but also demonstrate that it was the competition between the states and the federal government that by 1795 left Native Americans more willing to accommodate U.S. officials in a joint cooperative fight against hunger.

The Strong Hand of Government, 1789–1793

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rod Andrew
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Military Campaign ◽  
Secretary Of War

This chapter continues the narrative of Pickens’s diplomacy on the frontier. He continues to demand that both white settlers and Indians negotiate in good faith and obey federal treaties, believing that peace is impossible without strong federal authority. At one point he and other leaders come to believe that war with the Creeks is necessary because of their flagrant violation of the Treaty of New York. President Washington and Secretary of War Knox come close to asking him to lead a military campaign against the Indians, but ultimately decide not to seek war.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
James R. Skillen
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Federal Law Enforcement ◽  
Federal Lands ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution

In April 2014, near Bunkerville, Nevada, Cliven Bundy and hundreds of armed supporters faced off with federal law enforcement officers who were removing his trespassing cattle from federal lands. Bundy described himself as the victim of a rogue federal government that trampled the US Constitution and deprived him of basic rights, and he was ready to “take this country back by force.”...

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