Sovereignty is the exclusive right to have control over an area of governance, people, or oneself. A sovereign is the highest lawmaking authority. Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in Book III, Chapter III of his 1763 treatise Of the Social Contract, argued, "the growth of the State giving the trustees of public authority more and means to abuse their power, the more the Government has to have power to contain the people, the more force the Sovereign should have in turn in order to contain the Government," with the understanding that the Sovereign is "a collective being" resulting from "the general will" of the people, and that "what any man, whoever he may be, orders on his own, is not a law" and in addition predicated on the assumption that the people have an impartial means by which to ascertain the general will. Thus the legal maxim, "there is no law without a sovereign."
In this model, national sovereignty is of an everlasting origin, such as nature, or a god, legitimating the divine right of kings in absolute monarchies or a theocracy. A more official distinction is whether the law is held to be sovereign, who constitutes a true state of law: the letter of the law is appropriate and enforceable, even when against the political will of the nation, as long as not officially changed following the constitutional procedure. Strictly speaking, any deviation from this principle constitutes a rebellion or a coup detats, regardless of the intentions. In legitimate and international law, the concept also pertains to a government possessing full control over its own affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit, and in certain context to various organs possessing legal jurisdiction in their own chief, rather than by mandate or under supervision. Determining whether a exact entity is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute.
In this model, national sovereignty is of an everlasting origin, such as nature, or a god, legitimating the divine right of kings in absolute monarchies or a theocracy. A more official distinction is whether the law is held to be sovereign, who constitutes a true state of law: the letter of the law is appropriate and enforceable, even when against the political will of the nation, as long as not officially changed following the constitutional procedure. Strictly speaking, any deviation from this principle constitutes a rebellion or a coup detats, regardless of the intentions. In legitimate and international law, the concept also pertains to a government possessing full control over its own affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit, and in certain context to various organs possessing legal jurisdiction in their own chief, rather than by mandate or under supervision. Determining whether a exact entity is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute.
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