SOVEREIGNTY. – The concept of sovereignty has become, since the mid-nineteenth century, the keystone of the modern conception of the State. However, both its content and its subject remain controversial, as the variety of theories on the State (v.) and on law hinder their precise determination, so that no single definition can be found among publicists. It may be said that the most general meaning of the term, derived from the Late Latin *superanus*, is that of superiority, and, in the specific case of the society to which it is applied, that of a power, authority, or function superior to other powers and functions existing within the same political organism. From this relative sense, it was not difficult to move to the more proper meaning of *potestas suprema*, which became the central core of the concept, though it requires further clarification.
I. GENESIS OF THE CONCEPT OF SOVEREIGNTY
Its origin is commonly traced back to the 16th century, BODIN, JEAN (v.), who, in his *De republica* (1576), is said to have first systematized II. Even before Bodin, the word had come into common use to designate the power of the king in opposition to the feudal powers subordinate to him; it appears, for example, in Budé (*De l'institution du prince*, Paris 1547). It must still be admitted that Bodin organized the principle of sovereignty in a more organic way. Granted these concessions, it must be noted in opposition that Bodin’s conception does not differ substantially from the preceding ones, since what he calls sovereignty is nothing other than what earlier thought called authority or *imperium*. In every society, he says, there must be a supreme power, called *maiestas*: this is therefore the *potestas suprema*, about which the preceding speculation had long discoursed.Nor is the definition he gives of it new: *summa in cives legibusque soluta potestas* (ibid.). The configuration of public power as *legibus solutus* goes back to Roman law, which continued to inspire medieval legists, though they subjected the concept to extensive reworking to limit its meaning. Bartolus maintained that the prince is *legibus solutus*, but at the same time added that it is just and equitable that he be subject to the law. Baldus, referring to the Romanist phrase, attributed to him the plenitude of power, but considered him bound by the laws of God and natural law. Bodin clearly belongs to this tradition, for after defining sovereignty as supreme power *legibus solutus*, he adds that it remains limited by divine, natural, and gentium law (cf. A. van Hove, *De legibus*, Malines 1930, nn. 202 ff.).
Nor can Bodin be credited with originality in attributing sovereignty to the republic as such, since Catholic theorists had already conceived authority as a right arising spontaneously from the fact of association, whose original subject was the people, understood as a unitary moral body. This is the conception that clearly prevails throughout the Middle Ages and among 16th-century writers, even though they were unfamiliar with the word sovereignty. Moreover, none of the elements usually attributed to sovereignty had been overlooked in previous centuries, such as autonomy and independence, which were undoubtedly included in the concept of *atarchia* or self-sufficiency, recognized by Aristotle as a property of the State and expressed in the scholastic definition of the State as a *societas perfecta* (cf. Santonastaso, *Le dottrine politiche da Lutero a Suárez*, Milan 1946, pp. 77 ff.).
To find the first enunciations of a theory of sovereignty that approaches that of modern State doctrine, one must descend to the 17th century, when theories of Hobbes and Rousseau emerged from a common naturalistic background, in which sovereignty is configured as an absolutely unlimited power. With the latter, in particular, the concept of popular sovereignty is affirmed, based on a naive contractualism, according to which sovereignty, divided into fragments among each member of society, would be nothing other than the arithmetical sum of particular sovereignties, gathered in the so-called general will. On this individualistic basis, French public law developed the concept of national sovereignty, partly correcting Rousseau’s atomistic conception (cf. E. Crosa, op. cit. in bibl.).
A strictly juridical reworking of sovereignty occurred in 19th-century Germany, where, for predominantly political reasons, there was a lively reaction against legal formalism. National sovereignty was replaced by State sovereignty, and this was conceived as an essential quality, as a subjective right of its legal personality. The change of subject, however, was not accompanied by an equal change in the scope already given to the concept: sovereignty continued to be defined as an absolutely unlimited power.
II. DETERMINATION OF THE CONCEPT OF SOVEREIGNTY
It remains to determine the concept within this historical framework. By sovereignty is commonly understood the supreme power of the State, the *summa potestas*, intended to direct the life of the political entity, with the faculty of government and of imposing law, backed by coercion. This definition, however, requires supplementation. A rational conception of collective life cannot dispense with indicating the end to which society, and therefore sovereignty, is naturally and essentially directed. Sovereignty, accordingly, defines, as Suárez did of political power (*Defensio Fidei*, I. III, cap. 2, n. 4), a supreme power to govern the State civilly, understanding by “civilly” the immediate end to which public power must serve. The elements that make up the concept of sovereignty are thus three: two intrinsic ones that reveal its substance, and one extrinsic to sovereignty itself but intrinsic to the political aggregate. The two intrinsic elements consist in the fact that sovereignty is a power—this is the generic aspect—but a power distinguished from others in that it is supreme in its order, the specific aspect; the extrinsic element is the end, the common good, toward which the wills of the associates tend. Some clarification will make the concept thus outlined more perspicuous. Taparelli conceives the sovereign as the center in which that universal authority necessarily arises, by a necessary law of our nature, from the association of men (Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale, 4th ed., Rome 1928, pp. 225 ff.). Sovereignty is therefore an authority, and precisely social authority. It consequently consists in the primordial right that the social aggregate possesses from its very constitution to regulate the activity of all its members for the attainment of the collective end. There is therefore no difficulty in accepting the most common theory, which conceives sovereignty as a power or subjective right of the State, connected with its legal personality.The points of convergence with contemporary doctrine can indeed be extended to two further characteristics, which are commonly attributed to sovereignty, namely that it constitutes an essential and original mark of the State.
Both of these characteristics are deduced from an objective examination of the political aggregate. An association of men cannot dispense with a central power to regulate its activity: sovereignty, therefore, as the faculty to direct and govern, is essential to II. Moreover, since the presence of a unitary power is a necessity of nature, such power or right arises spontaneously at the moment when the existence of society is brought into being by the convergence of free wills, so much so that not even the consent of the human race could prevent its arising and asserting itself. In its generic aspect, sovereignty is thus a power or authority, and properly that power which finds its firm foundation in the original right of society to demand from its members the necessary and useful services for the common good.
The specific characteristic that distinguishes sovereignty from other powers consists in its supremacy. It is a *summa potestas*, essentially not ordered to be subordinate to any other authority of the same order, ultimate in the hierarchical scale, and with a breadth of action that extends to all particular powers operating within the State. It is necessary, however, to establish the conditions required in order for a power to be such. According to Suárez, a power is called supreme when it acknowledges no superior above itself. Taparelli, following the tradition, likewise holds that independence from any other superiority is essential to the concept of sovereignty, since sovereignty is nothing other than authority that does not depend [on another]. A negative mark of supreme *potestas* is therefore independence from any other power of the same order.
Suárez adds (Def. Fid., I. III, cap. 2, n. 4) that civil power is called supreme when, within the same order and with respect to the same end, there is a resolution in its sphere, *i.e.*, in the entire community subject to II. In other words, a power is supreme when it has the competence of final judgment to resolve questions concerning collective life, with the exclusive exercise of coercion. In other terms, sovereignty exists in its true sense when the power it signifies is at the summit of the social hierarchy, subordinating to itself the lower nuclei and relative powers, to decide autonomously and with full competence on all that pertains to the common good. It is the competence of competences, the center in which all inferior competences are gathered and resolved, remaining subordinate to II.
Integrating the foregoing conclusion, sovereignty may be defined as a supreme and unitary right to govern public society, without dependence on any other authority of the same order.
For questions concerning the origin, subject, and intrinsic and extrinsic limits of sovereignty, in whose resolution Catholic doctrine differs significantly from contemporary doctrine, see the entry AUTORITÀ.