kentucky is a commonwealth. what is the differenct between a commonwealth and a state?

Answer 1

32 teeth

Answer 2

I live in the commonwealth of Virginia.. and did research on it.. This is from two sites that I found.. also giving you those sites below..

There is no difference between a commonwealth and a state in the U.S. To Locke, Hobbes, and other 17th-century writers the term "commonwealth" meant an organized political community -- what we today call a "state." Officially Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts are all commonwealths. When Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts became part of the United States, they merely took the old form of state in their title.

According to the website of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: At the time of the American Revolution, "commonwealth" was a popular term for describing a state/nation where the people came together by mutual consent. It was a term with democratic overtones, in contrast to the monarchic system that the colonies were trying to throw off. John Adams put the word "commonwealth" into his 1780 draft of the Massachusetts Constitution and it was accepted, as opposed to earlier rejected versions that used the term "state". So that's why Massachusetts is a commonwealth. Given that Virginia and Pennsylvania would have written their Constitutions around the same time, a similar idea might have factored in for them. Kentucky came later, so it's anyone's guess, but it's still one of the older states... it seems possible that the same idea could apply.

Answer 3

A search on "state difference commonwealth" turned up some useful results. At the About.com: Lawyers site, we learned that there are four commonwealths in the United States: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky.

The difference between these commonwealths and the other 46 states is in name alone -- they elected to call themselves commonwealths, a term drawn from political theory. The About.com lawyer assured us that, legally, there is no difference between a state and these four commonwealths.

There is, however, another form of commonwealth. The ever-helpful Dictionary.com offers this alternate definition: a "self-governing, autonomous political unit voluntarily associated with the United States, namely, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands." The degree of that dependency varies from place to place, but let's consider Puerto Rico as an example.

There are a few major differences between Puerto Rico and a typical American state:

-The Internal Revenue Code does not apply to Puerto Rico.
-Puerto Rico has no voting representation in Congress.
-Puerto Rican citizens are not allowed to vote in presidential elections.

Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens; they pay social security, can receive federal welfare, and can serve in the armed forces. But they don't pay federal taxes, and they don't vote in presidential elections.

So far, they've voted to keep it that way. Consider it a limited partnership.

Answer 4

search me on that one... I for years thought Kentucky was a state just like the rest. So there must be no difference between commonwealth and state---- except state is easier to spell !!!!

Answer 5

ALL 50 states, Puero Rico and other US 'possessions" are in our COMMONWEALTH.
It means that we use the same money.

The term 'state' as we use it, is a misnomer. a state is a TOTALLY independant, sovereign political unit. We commonly call them countries.
What our "states" are is more correctly called a province.
Our 50 'states' are called states because they were not originally united before the revolutionary war, and were autonomous until the ratification of the US Constitution, and they became under the jurisdiction of a central, federal, government.

Answer 6

Well crap, I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and also have a law degree, and haven't figured it out. Suppose I must just be stupid.