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Jul 4, 2017 · July 4 2017. National sovereignty was long ago consigned to the dustbin of history. “The days are for great empires, and not for little states,” proclaimed Joseph Chamberlain, Britain’s ...
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- History
sovereignty, in political theory, the ultimate overseer, or authority, in the decision-making process of the state and in the maintenance of order. The concept of sovereignty—one of the most controversial ideas in political science and international law—is closely related to the difficult concepts of state and government and of independence and dem...
In 16th-century France Jean Bodin (1530–96) used the new concept of sovereignty to bolster the power of the French king over the rebellious feudal lords, facilitating the transition from feudalism to nationalism. The thinker who did the most to provide the term with its modern meaning was the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), who argued that in every true state some person or body of persons must have the ultimate and absolute authority to declare the law; to divide this authority, he held, was essentially to destroy the unity of the state. The theories of the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78)—that the state is based upon a formal or informal compact of its citizens, a social contract through which they entrust such powers to a government as may be necessary for common protection—led to the development of the doctrine of popular sovereignty that found expression in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. Another twist was given to this concept by the statement in the French constitution of 1791 that “Sovereignty is one, indivisible, unalienable and imprescriptible; it belongs to the Nation; no group can attribute sovereignty to itself nor can an individual arrogate it to himself.” Thus, the idea of popular sovereignty exercised primarily by the people became combined with the idea of national sovereignty exercised not by an unorganized people in the state of nature, but by a nation embodied in an organized state. In the 19th century the English jurist John Austin (1790–1859) developed the concept further by investigating who exercises sovereignty in the name of the people or of the state; he concluded that sovereignty is vested in a nation’s parliament. A parliament, he argued, is a supreme organ that enacts laws binding upon everybody else but that is not itself bound by the laws and could change these laws at will. This description, however, fitted only a particular system of government, such as the one that prevailed in Great Britain during the 19th century.
Austin’s notion of legislative sovereignty did not entirely fit the American situation. The Constitution of the United States, the fundamental law of the federal union, did not endow the national legislature with supreme power but imposed important restrictions upon it. A further complication was added when the Supreme Court of the United States asserted successfully in Marbury v. Madison (1803) its right to declare laws unconstitutional through a procedure called judicial review. Although this development did not lead to judicial sovereignty, it seemed to vest the sovereign power in the fundamental document itself, the Constitution. This system of constitutional sovereignty was made more complex by the fact that the authority to propose changes in the Constitution and to approve them was vested not only in Congress but also in states and in special conventions called for that purpose. Thus, it could be argued that sovereignty continued to reside in the states or in the people, who retained all powers not delegated by the Constitution to the United States or expressly prohibited by the Constitution to the states or the people (Tenth Amendment). Consequently, the claims by advocates of states’ rights that states continued to be sovereign were bolstered by the difficulty of finding a sole repository of sovereignty in a complex federal structure; and the concept of dual sovereignty of both the union and the component units found a theoretical basis. Even if the competing theory of popular sovereignty—the theory that vested sovereignty in the people of the United States—was accepted, it still might be argued that this sovereignty need not be exercised on behalf of the people solely by the national government but could be divided on a functional basis between the federal and state authorities.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Apr 28, 2023 · Sovereignty is the bedrock of international relations. The concept lays out basic rules for how countries are allowed to interact with one another. In principle, it means countries get to control what happens inside their borders and can’t interfere in what happens elsewhere. This protects countries from being invaded over internal matters.
May 31, 2003 · Sovereignty, though its meanings have varied across history, also has a core meaning, supreme authority within a territory. It is a modern notion of political authority. Historical variants can be understood along three dimensions — the holder of sovereignty, the absoluteness of sovereignty, and the internal and external dimensions of ...
Dec 21, 2022 · Importance of democracy in a free and just society. Historically, many thinkers argued democracy can only be detrimental to a free and just society, characterizing rule by the majority as inherently unstable, irrational, and a threat to private property. The rich shall pay all the taxes, and the poor shall make all the laws.
Mar 2, 2011 · One of sovereignty’s key purposes is the peaceful coexistence of states with different internal political systems. Neglected as a subject of serious analysis in international relations during the Cold War, questions about sovereignty’s continuing relevance in a globalizing world have spurred numerous studies since the 1990s.
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Sovereignty continues to play an important role in domestic and international legal documents as well as in international relations. Sovereignty's most important function today lies in protecting the democratic self-determination of a politically united society with regard to the order that best suits it.
