Sovereignty

As a general term, sovereignty can be defined as the absolute authority of a state within its territory. As a theoretical construct, “sovereignty” can be deconstructed into two major components: (1) a state's self-perceived, inalienable right to universal authority, particularly the use of force within its boundaries, and (2) the recognition of such authority and boundaries by the international community. Because sovereignty encompasses the most basic quality of a state—the right to exist—concepts of and conflicts over sovereignty have fundamental implications for international law. Sovereignty is also intrinsically geographic by the nature of its definition; it is contingent on geography not only for determining the literal extent of state power but also for providing the geopolitical context in which states exercise their sovereignty.

However, sovereignty can neither be analyzed nor defined in a contextual vacuum. In 1918, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated, “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged. It is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used” (cited in Reisman, 1990, p. 872). When Holmes's axiom is applied to sovereignty, we end up with a theoretical construct that is highly dynamic and context-reflective. In essence, the means by which states claim, enforce, and defend their sovereignty have changed throughout [Page 2599]time, reflecting the geopolitical status quos of different eras.

Etymologically, sovereignty is derived from the term sovereign, which in turn originates from the absolute monarchies of feudal Europe. In these monarchies, the power of the state, particularly legitimacy over the use of force, was contained within a single person, who often claimed authority through divine providence. While documents such as Magna Carta (1215) limited the power of the absolute monarch in the latter half of the Middle Ages, sovereignty was still limited to a “geography of one.”

Sovereignty arose as a legal/geopolitical phenomenon resulting from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. The concluding document to the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), the Peace of Westphalia (recognized as the first “modern” international treaty), among other territorial compromises, allowed the individual states comprising the Holy Roman Empire to choose their own religion, a power that had been usurped by the Holy Roman Emperor. At the time of the Thirty Years’ War, religious institutions played a significant role in executing state functions, as well as being the largest authoritative presence in the daily lives of the people. Thus, by granting the state sole authority for religious determination, the Peace of Westphalia established the legal precedent for the aforementioned first component of sovereignty: State governments have absolute authority over affairs within their prescribed territories, to the explicit exclusion of external actors. Geography is the crucial contextualizing agent in what scholars have come to call “Westphalian sovereignty.” The concept of Westphalian sovereignty has been the foundation of the international system for more than 360 years.

The ability of a state to have absolute and sole control over its domestic affairs would be functionally nullified without the second component of sovereignty: international recognition. Signatories to the Peace of Westphalia as well as the subsequent international system that embraces Westphalian sovereignty, by electing to operate within that system, implicitly accept the second component. Demanding sovereignty over one's own territory necessitates recognizing separate geographies of influence under the control of neighboring states/sovereigns.

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