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principles, which a fallible and developing human view can, at the given moment, discover. It is begging the question to appeal to the consciousness of the world or of humanity against the consciousness of the state; for the world has no form of organization for making such interpretation, or for intervening between the state and its citizens to nullify the state's interpretation. . . . At the present stage of the world's civilization, a nearer approximation to truth seems to be attainable from the standpoint of a national state consciousness than from the standpoint of what is termed the consciousness of mankind. An appeal to the consciousness of mankind, if it bring any reply at all, will receive an answer confused, contradictory, and unintelligible. . . . Contact between states may, and undoubtedly does, clarify and harmonize the consciousness of each; but it is still the state consciousness which is the sovereign interpreter, and the state power which is the sovereign transformer of these interpretations into laws. . . . The state must have the power to compel the subject against his will; otherwise it is no state; it is only an anarchic society. Now the power to compel obedience and to punish for disobedience, is, or originates in, sovereignty.

89. Characteristics of sovereignty. Bluntschli, while denying the possibility of absolute internal supremacy and of complete external independence in actual practice, summarizes the characteristics of sovereign power as follows:

The State is the embodiment and personification of the national power. This power, considered in its highest dignity and greatest force, is called Sovereignty. . . . Sovereignty implies:

1. Independence of the authority of any other State. Yet this independence must be understood as only relative. International law, which binds all States together, no more contradicts the Sovereignty of States than constitutional law, which limits the exercise of public authority within.

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2. Supreme public dignity- what the Romans called majestas.

3. Plenitude of public power, as opposed to mere particular powers. Sovereignty is not a sum of particular isolated rights, but is a general or common right: it is a "central conception," and is as important in Public as that of property is in Private Law.

4. Further, it is the highest in the State. Thus there can be no political power above it. . . .

5. Unity, a necessary condition in every organism. The division of sovereignty paralyzes and dissolves a State, and is therefore incompatible with its healthy existence.

90. Sovereignty as supreme will. Willoughby considers sovereignty as the supreme will of a politically organized community. He also distinguishes between its internal and external aspects.1

Sovereignty is something more than a collection of powers. It is something more than a mechanical aggregate of separate and particular capacities. It does, indeed, include and necessitate the possession of certain powers, such as, for example, those of taxation, of contracting treaties, maintaining an armed force, etc.; but its content is not exhausted by an enumeration of these. It is an entity of itself, and represents the highest political power as embodied in the State. Sovereignty belongs to the State as a person, and represents the supremacy of its will.

Sovereignty, as thus expressing a supreme will, is necessarily a unity and indivisible, — unity being a necessary predicate of a supreme will. As Rousseau truly says: "Though Power may be divided, Will cannot." The logical impossibility of conceiving of a divided Sovereignty is apparent from the impossibility of predicating in the same body two powers each supreme. The will of the State may find its form of expression through different mouthpieces, and its activities may be exercised through a variety of organs, but the will itself, as thus variously expressed and performed, is a unity. In every political organization there must be one and only one source, whence all authority ultimately springs. This leads us to the second view in which the Sovereignty of the State is to be considered: namely, that of the relation of a State to other States. Thus far, we have considered Sovereignty as expressing the supremacy of the State's will over that of all persons and public bodies within its own organization: as binding them all, and being bound by none. Viewing it outwardly, now, in its international aspects, Sovereignty denotes independence, or complete freedom from all external control of a legal character. The State can be legally bound only by its own will. If upon any one point, however insignificant, its own will be not conclusive, but is legally dependent upon the consent of another power, its Sovereignty is destroyed.

91. Sovereignty from a sociological standpoint. Giddings, in surveying social evolution, finds four modes of sovereignty.2

According to the accepted conception of sovereignty, any individual, group or class of coöperating individuals, or entire coöperating people, having the disposition and the power to exact, and, in fact, exacting

1 Copyright, 1896, by The Macmillan Company.
2 Copyright, 1906, by The Macmillan Company.

obedience from all individuals in the social population, is a sovereign; and all individuals who obey a sovereign-be that sovereign a person, a class, or a people are subjects; while sovereign and subjects together in their normal relation of authority and obedience are a state.

This conception of sovereignty is demonstrably inadequate and even inaccurate. There has never yet existed in any human society any power that could, or continuously and under all circumstances did, compel the obedience of all individual members of that society, or even successfully punish all for disobedience. The accepted conception is an approximately true picture of sovereignty under one particular grouping of social conditions. Social psychology and the facts of history yield other conceptions, each approximately true for some given stage of social evolution.

What, for instance, is the true nature of sovereignty in a community where nearly all individuals most of the time actually yield loyal obedience to a supreme political person, a monarch, or a dictator? This supreme political person has no power to compel the obedience of his subjects if they choose to defy his commands. Yet he has a power that is real, and it is a development of one of the fundamental and universal phenomena of social psychology. He has the power to command obedience. This is from every point of view, psychological and practical, a wholly different thing from the power to compel. It is the power of impression rather than of physical force, but it achieves the same end: it secures the obedience. In most of the nations of the world, throughout the greater part of their history, sovereignty has been in fact a personal power to command obedience.

There is a form of political society in which the real sovereign is a superior class, an aristocracy. This class is descended from a group of conquerors that for a time retained and exercised an actual power to compel the obedience of the conquered. But it tends to become a relatively small minority until, presently, it could readily be overthrown if the people rose against it. Instead of rebelling, however, they continue to yield obedience. They yield to a power which dominates them through their deference to wealth, through their homage to superior mind, and through the assent of their minds to beliefs and dogmas, above all, to tradition. Fortified by religion and all the authority of tradition, the superior class exacts the obedience which it would be powerless, were resort made to physical force, to compel.

There have been occasions, recurring throughout history, when the masses of the people, aroused to opposition and compacted by revolutionary madness into infuriated mobs, have become, for the time being, a resistless physical power. These have been occasions and circumstances

under which, as after conquest, sovereignty has been in fact a power to compel obedience. No individual, class, or group has been able to resist or withstand it.

Finally, there have been in the past, and are now, political communities in which practically all men have contributed or contribute, through discussion and voluntary conduct, to the creation of a general purpose or policy; and in which practically all men yield or have yielded assent to a general will. This general will might command, exact, or compel a vast deal of individual obedience, but, actually, it does something different and higher. It evokes obedience. Appealing to reason and to conscience, it calls forth an obedience that is rendered freely and with full understanding that it is a reasonable and unforced service.

Instead, then, of one universal mode of sovereignty in political society, sociology, surveying past and existing societies comparatively, and guided by the facts of social psychology, discovers four distinct modes. of sovereignty, presented by different stages of social evolution; namely, first, Personal Sovereignty, or the power of the strong personality to command obedience; second, Class Sovereignty, or the power of the mentally and morally superior, with the aid of religion and tradition, to inspire obedience or through control of wealth to exact obedience; third, Mass Sovereignty, or the power of an emotionally and fanatically solidified majority to compel obedience; and, fourth, General Sovereignty, or the power of an enlightened, deliberative community to evoke obedience through a rational appeal to intelligence and conscience.

92. The limits of sovereignty. Lowell, considering sovereignty as a question of fact, argues that its extent depends upon the amount of obedience actually rendered.1

If the extent of sovereign power is measured by the disposition to obedience on the part of the bulk of the society, it may be said that the power of no sovereign can be strictly unlimited, because commands can be imagined which no society would be disposed to obey. This may very well be true, and perhaps it would be proper to classify sovereigns, not according as their authority is absolute or not, but according as it is indefinite, or restrained within bounds more or less definitely fixed; for unless the limits of power are tolerably well determined, they tend to stretch farther and farther. Definite limits may be set to sovereign power in either one of two ways: they may result from the rivalry of two independent rulers, who settle by negotiation questions concerning the boundaries of their respective jurisdictions, and quarrel when they

1 By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

cannot agree; or they may be established by some formal declaration, which by sufficient precision enables the bulk of the society to have a general opinion about the extent of legislative authority, and to distinguish between those commands which fall within the boundaries prescribed and those which do not.

II. LOCATION OF SOVEREIGNTY

93. Sovereignty of the people. A recent statement of the doctrine that sovereignty lies back of the government in the hands of the people is given by Hart.

The common phrases, "the people" and "consent of the governed," suggest the distinguishing mark of popular government which makes the legal constitutional depository of sovereignty nearly correspond to the physical possessor of ultimate power. Where nearly all adult men can vote, the majority which decides questions has presumably the preponderant strength necessary to carry out its will; hence sovereignty of the people avoids many of the shocks and revolutions which under other forms are necessary to enforce the truth that in the long run a minority cannot impose its will on a majority. Yet the government of the many must be carried out by the few; and for a time the majority may yield to a small number of determined men, better armed or better organized or simply in possession.

The long and bitter experience of mankind shows the necessity of protecting the minority, or the apathetic and disorganized majority, by such a formal statement of principles as may cause the powerful to hesitate before applying the ultimate test of sovereignty, namely, the possession of superior force. Tradition, law, and especially definite and written constitutions, compel usurpers to confront vested rights and prejudices which are immense social forces; hence the modern, and especially the American, practice of multiplying checks on the methods and extent to which the sovereign power shall be exercised. One such check is the doctrine of the compact, very familiar at the time of the Revolution,-which was in effect that government was founded on an agreement between those who exercised power and those on whom it was exercised, and that to violate the tenor of the agreement would justify resistance. Another form of stating the same thing is the doctrine of indefeasible personal rights, which cannot be destroyed by any act of sovereignty: the doctrine does not in itself save men from arbitrary imprisonment, but it causes their oppressors to be objects of suspicion and dislike. The doctrine of constitutional limitations on government is a way

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