INTERNAL SOVEREIGNTY. Under the head of in ternal sovereignty another distinction is made between what is termed 'legal' sovereignty and `political' sovereignty. Political sovereignty is the ultimate controlling power resident in any political society. Legal sovereignty is the or ganized power which at any given time must be regarded as legally supreme. Political sovereignty arises out of the very nature of the State as an organization for the purposes of social control. A supreme power enabling the State to preserve a form of public order, protect the community, and otherwise promote the general welfare is neces sary to the life of organized society, and its ab sence is. anarchy. Political sovereignty, then, is that power in the State the. will of which is ulti mately obeyed. At any given time this supreme will may or may not he accurately expressed by the existing legal or governmental authority.
Legal sovereignty refers to the supreme power of the State as embodied in some legal or gov ernmental organ or agency. Thus the King in Parliament is termed a sovereign body in Eng land; a Constituent Convention is so called in France: or a king in some eases is called the sovereign. This legal sovereign may not, al though it generally does, repres nt the actual sovereignty in the State, but it is none the less supreme from the legal or governmental point of view. For example, the political sovereignty may actually belong to the mass of the people while the legal sovereignty may be vested in an aristocracy or a monarch; and, on the other hand, the actual power may be vested in a few while the government is democratic in form. Again,
the legal sovereign, as for example the Parlia ment in Great Britain, may pass a law opposed by the majority of the people, but the enactment is none the less law and legally enforceable until repealed, or until the Government is overthrown by a revolution.
The origin of sovereignty has been explained in various ways by different schools of political philosophy. It has been asserted that the ruling authority holds by divine appointment or sanc tion; that the right to rule is a property right descending as other property in regular line of succession; that the sovereignty is created by a voluntary contract either between ruler and ruled or between independent individuals, as in the social contract (q.v.) ; that sovereignty is the prerogative of superior force and belongs to the strongest claimant. In modern times it is gener ally believed that sovereignty is a product of po litical necessity arising out of the essential na ture of political association, and the tenure of the particular holders of the political sovereignty is a result of historieal evolution. This process has thrown the supreme power in most civilized States into the hands of the mass of the people.