Abstract
Sovereignty is one of the foremost institutions of our world: it has given political life a distinctive constitutional shape that virtually defines the modern era and sets it apart from previous eras. As A.P. d’Entrèves puts it: “The importance of the doctrine of sovereignty can hardly be overrated. It was a formidable tool in the hands of lawyers and politicians, and a decisive factor in the making of modern Europe.”1 And not only Europe: in the past century or two, sovereignty has become a cornerstone of modern politics around the world. It was originally an institution of escape from rule by outsiders and to this day it remains a legal barrier to foreign interference in the jurisdiction of states. Basic norms of the UN Charter (Articles 2 and 51) enshrine the principle of equal sovereignty, the doctrine of nonintervention, and the inherent right of self-defense.
A sovereign power may choose to subscribe to limitations without ceasing to be sovereign.
F.H. Hinsley
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Notes
A.P. d’Entrèves, Natural Law (London: Hutchinson, 1970), p. 67.
The expression is Laski’s. See H. Laski, A Grammar of Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1978).
J.L. Briefly, The Law of Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 40.
F.H. Hinsley, Sovereignty (New York: Oxford, 1966), p. 26.
Hinsley, “The Concept of Sovereignty and the Relations between States,” in W.J. Stankiewicz (ed.), In Defense of Sovereignty, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 275.
See R. Falk, “The Grotian Moment,” International Insights vol. 13 (Fall 1997), pp. 3–34 and my reply to that claim in chapter 8.
Sir George Clark, Early Modern Europe (New York: Oxford, 1960), pp. 27–28.
E.H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).
M. Keen, Medieval Europe (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 262.
J.H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past and Present, no. 137 (November 1992), pp. 48–71.
J. Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300–1450 (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 84.
This is a modification of the notion of universitas theorized by M. Oakeshott, “The Rule of Law,” in his On History and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983);
also see M. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
M. Wight, Systems of States (Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1977), p. 151.
See J. Vincent, “Realpolitik,” in J. Mayall (ed.), The Community of States (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), pp. 73–85.
J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), pp. 120–42.
S. Wolin, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), p. 143
See Norman Davies, Europe: A History (London: Pimlico, 1997), p. 490.
M.J. Tooley (tr.), Bodin: Six Books of the Commonwealth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
See A. Osiander, The States System of Europe, 1640–1990 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 27–28.
J.N. Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965).
M.N. Shaw, Title to Territory in Africa (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 17.
James Madison in The Federalist no. 10, reprinted in R.M. Hutchins (ed.), Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), vol. 43, pp. 49–53.
Jennifer Jackson Preece, “Ethnic Cleansing as an Instrument of Nation-State Creation,” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 20 (1998), pp. 817–42.
See Jennifer Jackson Preece, National Minorities and the European Nation-States System (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
A. Pellet, “The Opinions of the Badinter Arbitration Committee,” European Journal of International Law, vol. 3 (1992), pp. 178–85.
E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 74.
Jennifer Jackson Preece, “Minority Rights in Europe: From Westphalia to Helsinki.” Review of International Studies, vol. 23 (January 1997), pp. 75–92.
K.J. Alter, “Who Are the ‘Masters of the Treaty’? European Governments and the European Court of Justice,” International Organization, vol. 52 (Winter 1998), pp. 121–47.
N. MacCormick, “Liberalism, Nationalism and the Post-Sovereign State,” Political Studies, vol. XLIV (1996), p. 555.
For an argument that sovereignty is a bargaining resource that is being shared among EU states see Robert O. Keohane, “Hobbes’s Dilemma and Institutional Change in World Politics: Sovereignty in International Society,” in H-H. Holm and G. Sorensen (eds.), Whose World Order: Uneven Globalization and the End of the Cold War (Boulder, Co: Westview, 1995), pp. 165–86.
Quoted by J.H.H. Weiler, “European Neo-constitutionalism: In Search of Foundations for the European Constitutional Order,” Political Studies, vol. XLIV (1996), pp. 520–21.
U. Preuss, “Two Challenges to European Citizenship,” Political Studies, vol. XLIV (1996), pp. 543–44.
H. Bull, The Anarchical Society, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1995).
D.M. Frame (tr.), The Complete Essays of Montaigne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), book 3, ch. 13, p. 816.
This translation is from P. Burke, Montaigne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 33.
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© 2005 Robert Jackson
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Jackson, R. (2005). Changing Faces of Sovereignty. In: Classical and Modern Thought on International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979520_5
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