Sovereignty Of Sovereignty

Sovereignty is a legal concept distinct from independence or from political and economic power. Sovereignty does not mean that the State is not bound by international law or that the States have the right to determine freely their own jurisdiction and competences. It simply means that the State is at the top of the pyramid of human groups. From this idea, it follows that all States must be equal, the principle of equal sovereignty of the States being indissolubly linked to the respect of the inherent rights of sovereignty. Sovereignty applies to all States from the moment they reach that status, regardless of their territory and population size, the form and nature of their government or their autonomy or economic or political dependence on

For an obligation to be legally binding, the sovereign States must have either accepted it or taken part in the process of developing it. Except from the fundamental principles of the international legal order, inherent in the existence of the State, and the norms of jus cogens, no legal rule is universal in scope. Most rules of international law are only authoritative for those subjects that have accepted them. For instance, the principle of sovereign consent of States is the basis of the delegations of powers that occur in the international order, it is constructed on the idea that international laws that bind States “emanate from their own free will as expressed in conventions or by usages generally accepted as expressing principles of law.” This principle, though established in 1927, is still a central standard of international law today. Explicit consent is required in the international agreements that States enter when granting some powers to an international institution, though the specific requirements of ratification might be left to the decision of the domestic authorities. Beyond the required initial consent of international delegations, it is frequent for such delegations to be of conditional nature. States retain the power to revoke authority after it has been granted. Because they are subjected by the decisions of international bodies only so long as they agree to be, States remain free from external control. Since international transfers of authority exist only when national law-making entities say they do, they are not contrary to domestic sovereignty but are instead the expression of this