Sovereignty
Analysis of "sovereignty" brings one into contact with nearly all the major problems in political philosophy. At least seven related concepts may be distinguished:
(1) A person or an institution may be said to be sovereign if he or it exercises authority (as a matter of right) over every other person or institution in the legal system, there being no authority competent to override him or it. For some writers, though not for all, this concept also implies unlimited legal competence; for, it is said, an authority competent to determine the limits of its own competence must be omnicompetent. (2) Difficulties arising from the first concept have led some writers to ascribe sovereignty to a constitution or basic norm from which all other rules of a system derive validity. (3) Sovereignty is sometimes ascribed to a person, or a body or a class of persons, said to exercise supreme power in a state, as distinct from authority, in the sense that their wills can usually be expected to prevail against any likely opposition.
The state itself is often said to be sovereign. This may mean any of at least four distinct (though possibly related) things: (4) that the state as an organized association will in fact prevail in conflict with any person or any other association in its territory; (5) that the rights of all such associations and persons derive from the legal order that is supported by the state or that (according to Hans Kelsen) is the state; (6) that the state is a moral order with claims to obedience and loyalty which have precedence over all others; (7) that the state is autonomous vis-à-vis other states; according to some theories, the state has only such obligations, whether in law or in morals, as it chooses to recognize.
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