The System

Abstract

According to the reasonable principles of international social life, sovereignty, the paramount power in the juridical community of the human species, belongs to mankind, the personification of the human species, and, strictly speaking, exclusively to mankind. As, however, in the present state of the world, the general direction of public affairs is exercised by the States, as the representatives of mankind, there is no objection, although the power of the States is a derived power and a creation of historical events, to giving the power of the States the qualification “sovereignty”, provided that we take the word “sovereignty” in a peculiar sense, the sense of an immediate tenure of mankind. When we use the expression in the abovementioned sense, we are able to compare the qualifications, appertaining to the sovereignty of the State according to the reasonable principles, with the qualifications granted to the same in positive law.