Sovereignty as Dominium? Reconstructing the Constructivist Roman Law Thesis1

Abstract

The constructivist authors John Gerard Ruggie, Friedrich Kratochwil, and Nicholas Onuf have each independently pressed the case that the concept of state sovereignty owes its genesis to the rediscovery of the Roman law of private property in the Renaissance. This article supports this conclusion, but argues that it was the notion of representation that Roman property law bequeathed which was of such significance. It makes this argument through analyses of the writings of Hobbes (on the temporally permanent state), Montesquieu (on the territorially bounded state), and Sieyes (on the nation-state). It thus provides a fresh account of the rise of the nation-state within the framework of a powerful series of analyses of sovereignty that have been posited by scholars in the discipline of International Relations.