What differences exist between the federal system of government and the California system of government?

Powers not granted to the Federal government are reserved for States and the people, which are divided between State and local governments.

Most Americans have more frequent contact with their State and local governments than with the Federal Government. Police departments, libraries, and schools—not to mention driver’s licenses and parking tickets—usually fall under the oversight of State and local governments. Each state has its own written constitution, and these documents are often far more elaborate than their Federal counterpart. The Alabama Constitution, for example, contains 310,296 words—more than 40 times as many as the U.S. Constitution.

All State governments are modeled after the Federal Government and consist of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. The U.S. Constitution mandates that all States uphold a “republican form” of government, although the three-branch structure is not required.

Executive Branch

In every state, the Executive Branch is headed by a governor who is directly elected by the people. In most states, other leaders in the executive branch are also directly elected, including the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the secretary of state, and auditors and commissioners. States reserve the right to organize in any way, so they often vary greatly with regard to executive structure. 

Legislative Branch

All 50 States have legislatures made up of elected representatives, who consider matters brought forth by the governor or introduced by its members to create legislation that becomes law. The legislature also approves a State’s budget and initiates tax legislation and articles of impeachment. The latter is part of a system of checks and balances among the three branches of government that mirrors the Federal system and prevents any branch from abusing its power.

Except for one State, Nebraska, all States have a bicameral legislature made up of two chambers: a smaller upper house and a larger lower house. Together the two chambers make State laws and fulfill other governing responsibilities. (Nebraska is the lone state that has just one chamber in its legislature.) The smaller upper chamber is always called the Senate, and its members generally serve longer terms, usually four years. The larger lower chamber is most often called the House of Representatives, but some states call it the Assembly or the House of Delegates. Its members usually serve shorter terms, often two years.

Judicial Branch

State judicial branches are usually led by the State supreme court, which hears appeals from lower-level State courts. Court structures and judicial appointments/elections are determined either by legislation or the State constitution. The supreme court focuses on correcting errors made in lower courts and therefore holds no trials. Rulings made in State supreme courts are normally binding; however, when questions are raised regarding consistency with the U.S. Constitution, matters may be appealed directly to the United States Supreme Court.

Local Government

Local governments generally include two tiers: counties, also known as boroughs in Alaska and parishes in Louisiana, and municipalities, or cities/towns. In some States, counties are divided into townships. Municipalities can be structured in many ways, as defined by State constitutions, and are called, variously, townships, villages, boroughs, cities, or towns. Various kinds of districts also provide functions in local government outside county or municipal boundaries, such as school districts or fire protection districts.

Municipal governments—those defined as cities, towns, boroughs (except in Alaska), villages, and townships—are generally organized around a population center and in most cases correspond to the geographical designations used by the United States Census Bureau for reporting of housing and population statistics. Municipalities vary greatly in size, from the millions of residents of New York City and Los Angeles to the few hundred people who live in Jenkins, Minnesota.

Municipalities generally take responsibility for parks and recreation services, police and fire departments, housing services, emergency medical services, municipal courts, transportation services (including public transportation), and public works (streets, sewers, snow removal, signage, and so forth).

Whereas the Federal Government and State governments share power in countless ways, a local government must be granted power by the State. In general, mayors, city councils, and other governing bodies are directly elected by the people.

Written by Sam Brotman, JD, LLM, MBA | Jul 15, 2020 2:29:35 PM

What Are the Differences Between the Federal System and the State of California? So the IRS tends to get a lot of flack but the federal system for tax is actually pretty well developed and here's why the IRS is an administrative agency so as an administrative agency it makes rules interpreting the way that it's going to enforce the tax law and it makes rules to govern what will happen if you get into a dispute with the IRS so the IRS is essentially a rulemaking Authority but in addition to the IRS you've got a Tax Court and what the Tax Court does is the Tax Court is a judicial system you've got judges it's a court and you've got people in all 50 states who are litigating tax issues in court and there's a series of judicial opinions that come out and what happens is those judicial opinions function as a check against the IRS so the IRS isn't allowed to just ignore a judicial opinion so what happens is you've got this system of pools that's created on the administrative level and then you've got this judicial check which functions against those rules so you've got this really well-defined harmony between the administrative system and the judicial check the system that operates and enforces the IRS rules and you can see that and a lot of the procedure that's come out of the IRS level is it's very well shaped by the courts in California you don't have as good of a judicial system number one if you've ever been to court in California you know how difficult it is to get in there in.

The first place well if you can imagine it's even more difficult to get in on it case the California Constitution create creates some barriers to get tax cases in the Superior Court they take a long time to get through and then you're dealing with a judicial body that doesn't have a whole lot of tax cases and doesn't have a lot of experience in deciding them now California developed this thing called the offices tax appeals which is supposed to function as a tax court in California it replaced the Board of Equalization back in 2017 but it's a relatively new body and the decisions that have come out of there have been number one largely pro-government and number two they haven't served as as good of a check on the administrative agencies in California so the net effectiveness is you get these administrative tax agencies and you get the people who write the policy for tax law and tax procedure in California and those people are doing I believe they're doing a really good job they've got some really smart people in Sacramento who are doing the best to write laws and write procedures that will impact the state of California and will impact the people here and try to do so fairly even-handedly it's not completely have a level playing field but it's they try and be as fair as they can.

The problem is is once policy comes out of Sacramento then you've got all these district offices that are located all over the state of California and what happens is you get different people running those offices and so the interpretation of the policy that's coming out of Sacramento gets interpreted in a variety of different ways we've had cases here at the firm when we'll take we'll have two clients that run exactly the same business or virtually the same distance and are dealing with an identical situation it'll go through two separate district offices and you'll get two different results and it's frustrating it's frustrating for our clients because the position that of a lot of clients take is we just want to do the right thing we just don't know what the right thing is and so that would that's what makes California and state tax law really challenging and that's why it's so frustrating for practitioners and for clients equally is because the rules don't get forced and it's consistently across the board so that's to highlight one of the big differences between the federal system and the state tax system.

To govern is to control, influence, or regulate. The very basis of our country and state’s constitution does just that. It is quite remarkable that a document, put together over 220 years ago, has held its ground and gone to influence other countries’ and states’ governments, just like our very own state of California. When comparing the U.S. Constitution with the California Constitution, readers can very much identify the similarities to one another as well as major differences that distinguish the state and the country’s government. The two documents contain very general similarities. They both have a bicameral legislature, which means that they have two chambers or houses. They also both have a Bill of Rights which showcases the rights that the citizens have. Like the U.S. government, the Californian government also has a legislative, executive, and judicial branch where, in short, the legislative branch makes the laws, the executive branch carries out the laws, and the judicial branch interprets the laws, among other things. In order for both governments to run smoothly, California was influenced by the federal system of checks and balances, meaning that no single branch of government can become too powerful. In addition, the state governor has similar duties to the president such as serving as commander in chief of a militia and having the supreme executive power (Cal. Const. art. V, § 1&7). Although, within the similarities, many differences can be noted between the two documents, ranging from minor differences to major differences. Starting in the legislative branch, some minor differences include the federal bicameral legislature containing the Senate and the House of Representatives (U.S. Const. art. I, § 2&3), whereas ... ... middle of paper ... ...tering or pursuing a business, profession, vocation, or employment because of sex, race, creed, color, or national or ethnic origin” which still lives up to itself now (Cal. Const. art. I, § 8). In addition, non citizens of the state “have the same property rights as citizens” (Cal. Const. art. I, § 20). There are a ton more differences the Californian Constitution has from the Bill of Rights, mainly because of how vague the document is, which gives the federal government the room to interpret as necessary. Researching and reading about both documents entirely enforces the notion that to govern is to control, influence, or regulate. All these laws and rights make for a controlled environment to live in which is being constantly questioned and infracted unpin everyday. The Founding Fathers put forth an amazing document that will live on for years and years to pass.