[1] In the late 1980's, the Government submitted a revised list of import duties and tariffs for approval by the National Panchayat. The discovery that the list of duties on imported foods included the word "beef" created such a furor of denouncements of the Government that a new list, minus the offending term, was hastily submitted in its place.

[2] The eagle was adopted as the U.S. symbol in 1782, after the adoption of the country's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation in 1781; but its status as national symbol was not referred to in the 1789 constitution. Legal protection began in 1940, and was further strengthened by the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

[3] Regarding symbols and continuities, those interested in Nepal's heritage of Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism may note that the new constitution includes provisions on the "Method of Making the Sun" and the "Method of Making the Moon" (Schedule 1).

[4] Compare Article 115/8 of the Nepal constitution, which explicitly forbids such a suspension of habeas corpus even under a proclamation of emergency.

[5] In traditional European usage, "nations," related to natus, "birth," referred to peoples sharing a common heritage, and was used much like the modern "ethnic groups," whether or not groups so designated exercised absolute sovereignty over their territory. During the 18th and particularly the 19th century, the ideal that nations should be states and vice versa - that is, that peoples should be independent and sovereign - became widespread, and played a role in various revolutions and independence movements. The strength of the nation-state ideal gradually led to popular usage that assumes the identity of the two terms, and perhaps creates the expectation, retrospectively, that all states are ipso facto nations.