SOVEREIGNTY. While society is in a rude state or only tribally organized there is no distinct sovereignty, no power which all persons habitually obey. Thus there is no sovereignty among wandering groups of Australian savages : each family is isolated, each horde is a loose and unstable collection. When the horde has become a tribe there may exist no definite sovereign. Distinct in time of war, the power of the chief may be fluctuating and faint in time of peace ; even in time of war it may be subject to the authority of a council. Tribes of the same ethnic stock may form a sort of federation, permanent or temporary. "With the council of the confederacy," it has been said, "and, more generally, in the confederacy, sovereignty arises and the true political tradition is evolved" (F. H. Giddings, Principles of Sociology, p. 285). When the city and the State are conterminous the seat of sovereignty be comes defined. Such was the condition of things in Greece, as con sidered by Aristotle in his Politics. He discusses the question what is the supreme power in the State (3. 1o), which he defines as an aggregate of citizens (3. i.), and he recognizes that it may be lodged in one, a few, or many. In his view the distinctive mark of the State is not so much sovereignty (7. 4) as self-sufficiency; a State is not a mere aggregate of persons ; it is a union of them suffi cient for the purposes of life (7. 8). The early Roman jurists speak little of sovereignty. But later, with the belief in the exist ence of an empire entitled to universal sway, an absolutist theory of sovereignty was developed in the writings of jurists.
Among the theories prevalent in the middle ages was one that mankind formed a unity, with the pope and the emperor at the head of it : the universal church and the universal emperor ruled the world. (Rehm, Geschichte der Rechtszvissenschaft, p. 198). When the power of the emperor was weakened, and the idea of a universal ruler was gone, a new test of sovereignty was applied —that of external independence ; the true sovereign States were universitates superiorem non recognoscentes. There were times
and countries in the middle ages in which the collective power of the community was small: many of the great corporations were virtually autonomous; the central authority was weak; the matters as to which it could count upon universal obedience were few. In such circumstances the conception of sovereignty was imperfect. The modern theory is first clearly stated in Jean Bodin's book On the Commonwealth (French ed., 1576; Latin version, 1586). He writes thus: "Respublica est familiarum rerumque inter ipsas communium, summa potestate ac ratione moderata multitudo." His theory, which corresponded to the France of Louis XI., was a theory of despotism.
One favourite theory was that sovereignty originated in a social contract. Hobbes, in his Leviathan expounded his notion of an agreement by which absolute power was irrevocably trans ferred to the ruler. Rousseau assumes his famous pacte social, the terms of which are : "Chacun de nous met en commun sa personne et toute sa puissance sous la supreme direction de la volonte generale ; et nous recevons encore chaque membre comme partie indivisible de tout" (Du Contrat social, 1. c. 6).
Among the different senses in which "sovereign" has been used are the following:— a. "Sovereign" may be titular—the king in Great Britain.
b. The legal sovereign : the person or persons who, according to the law of the land, legislate or administer the government.
c. The political or constitutional sovereign : the body of per sons in whom the actual power at any moment or ultimately resides. Sometimes this is designated "the collective sovereignty." d. Sovereignty is also used in a wider sense, as the equivalent of the power of the whole nation or society (Gierke, 3. 568).
The distinction between real and nominal sovereignty was familiar to mediaeval writers, who recognized a double sovereignty, and distinguished between (I) the real or practical sovereignty resident in the people, and (2) the personal sovereignty of the ruler (Adolf Dock, Der Souveranitiitsbegriff, etc., p. 13).