[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Pennsylvania

[Michael Snow]

Dan Rosenthal wrote:
> On Jul 11, 2007, at 8:40 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>> The legal differences between states are minor enough for plenty of 
>> national membership
>> organizations to exist.
> Which largely have independently registered and incorporated state 
> chapters/organizations, that are independent of (but subservient to) 
> the national organization. You have NOW (the organization) and then 
> NOW of Illinois. The national Democratic Party. The Democratic Party 
> of Florida. The Jewish Federation. The Jewish Federation of 
> California. The American Bar Association. The Florida Bar Association. 
> The South Carolina Bar Association (which I can assure you has 
> extremely different laws than Florida does).
The ABA and the various state bar associations are really not good 
illustrations of your point here. State bar associations are not 
subservient to or even affiliated with the ABA, which is purely a trade 
and lobbying association. Rather, the state bar associations are 
licensing bodies that determine the qualifications for attorneys to 
practice in that state's courts, and subservient to whoever has the 
ultimate authority over those qualifications (commonly the state's 
highest court). Anyway, they're quasi-public entities with obligations 
to serve the entire state, and focused pretty exclusively on their 
state. Probably not the most useful model for us.

--Michael Snow