THE CONCEPT OF SOVEREIGNTY

Abstract

No concept has raised so many conflicting issues and involved nineteenth-century jurists and political theorists in so desperate a maze as the concept of Sovereignty. The reason is perhaps that the original, genuine philosophical meaning of the concept had not been, from the very start, sufficiently examined and seriously tested by them. In the same measure as crucial practical problems dealing with international law developed, the controversies about State Sovereignty, considered in its external aspect (relations between states), grew deeper and more extended. The question was asked whether the international community as a whole is not the true holder of Sovereignty, rather than the individual states.' And, in some quarters, the very notion of Sovereignty was challenged.2 Such was the stand taken first by Triepel, then by several other international lawyers, including Willoughby3 and Foulke.4 Yet that challenge to the concept of Sovereignty remained only juridical in nature, and did not go to the philosophical-roots of the matter. My aim, in this essay, is to discuss Sovereignty not in terms of juridical theory, but in terms of political philosophy. I think that the grounds for doing so are all the better since "Sovereignty," as Jellinek once observed, "in its historical origins is a political concept which later became transformed"5 in order to secure a juristic asset to the political power of the State. It is my contention that political philosophy must eliminate Sovereignty both as a word and as a concept-not because it is an antiquated concept,' or by virtue of a sociological-juridical theory of "objective law" ;7 and not because the concept of Sovereignty creates insuperable difficulties and theoretical entanglements in the field of international law; but because, considered in its genuine meaning, and in the perspective of the proper scientific realm to which