Sovereignty
idea · 7 works · 17 mentions · 40 anchored passages
sovereignty · sovereign power · supremacy · Sovereign · despotism · dominion · kingship · rights of sovereignty · spherical sovereignty · supreme power
in the texts
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
The contested political term for supreme, unlimited governmental power, which the author argues was deliberately excluded from American constitutions.
Then the divine sovereignty claimed by governments of every form, was completely exploded or reclaimed by the natural or divine right of self-government, not to be again surrendered, but to be retained and employed in creating and controling governments, considered as trustees invested with limited functions, and not as sovereigns possessing powers derived from that source of despotism.
Far from discerning any glimpse of the powers of sovereignty in our constitutions, I see nothing but long catalogues of limitations, restrictions, balances and divisions of power, and if this young political family can be ground back into the old hoary traitor sovereignty, in the mill of construction, it will be just reversing the ancient prodigy of grinding old men into young ones.
Neither the declaration of independence, nor the federal constitution, nor the constitution of any single state, uses this equivocal and illimitable word.
Lectures on the Early History of Institutions
The central legal-philosophical concept of the lecture: the determinate human superior receiving habitual obedience within an independent political society.
I believe I may assume that most of my hearers are familiar with the general character of the investigation prosecuted by Austin in the Treatise to which I have referred, but, as his definitions are not easily carried in the memory in their complete shape, I will give his descriptions of an Independent Political Society and of Sovereignty, the two conceptions being interdependent and inseparable from one another.
The definitions which I read from the Sixth Lecture furnish Austin’s tests for discovering the seat of Sovereignty in independent states.
Before proceeding to speak at some length in my next Lecture of these historical limitations on the practical value of Austin’s theories, let me repeat my opinion that if the method of discussion which seems to me correct had been followed in his treatise, and if the examination of Sovereignty had preceded the examination of the conceptions dependent on it, a considerable number of the statements …
The Rights of War and Peace
The concept of supreme political authority discussed and later critiqued in Grotius's doctrine.
In the First Book, he considers whether any war is just, which leads to the distinction between public and private war, and this in turn to a discussion of the nature and embodiment of sovereignty.
If he identifies sovereignty with supreme power without any adequate conception of its ethical basis, he is at least as advanced in his thinking as the conceptions of his time, which had not yet grasped the idea of the state as a moral organism.
and therefore in an elective government, if the king or the royal family should become extinct, the rights of sovereignty, as it has been already shewn, would revert to the people.
Adab al-wazīr
Sulṭanah, sovereignty, the institution entitled to its own honourable revenues and degraded when its holder reaches for the earnings of his subjects.
” The second is that kings are the most honourable of men in office, and so the revenues of sovereignty were assigned to them alone, because those are the most honourable of revenues in the manner of their earning;
The Freedom of the Seas (Mare Liberum)
The legal concept of rightful dominion over territory, examined at length to determine who legitimately holds it in the East Indies.
Wherefore, since both possession and a title of possession are lacking, and since the property and the sovereignty of the East Indies ought not to be considered as if they had previously been res nullius, and since, as they belong to the East Indians, they could not have been acquired legally by other persons, it follows that the East Indian nations in question are not the chattels of the Portugue …
However, natural reason itself, the precise words of the law, and the interpretation of the more learned men all show clearly that the act of discovery is sufficient to give a clear title of sovereignty only when it is accompanied by actual possession.
But even if this title could be justified, it would not serve to establish sovereignty, except by right of conquest, that is to say, occupation would be a prerequisite.
The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660
The ultimate authority to govern the state, contested between King and Parliament as the crisis escalates toward civil war.
Later on there is the gradual awakening of a part of the nation to the truth that it is impossible to carry out the new system in combination with Charles, and this leads to the putting forth by Parliament of a claim to sovereignty really incompatible with Kingship.
They would simply have established government by persons appointed by Parliament in lieu of government by the King, and they may therefore be taken as definitely marking the acceptance by the majority of the House of Commons of the idea that the King’s sovereignty must not merely be weakened but practically set aside (see p.
Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John
Sovereignty, or supreme power in the state, discussed as the constitutional principle threatened by the split authority created under chapter 61.
If it had been possible to put so violent an expedient into practice, the “sovereignty,” or supreme power in England, would have been split into two.
No King would submit tamely to remain a sovereign, whose “sovereignty” existed on sufferance of his enemies.