Sovereignty: Myth and Reality

Abstract

Certainly, the origins of the modern state lie in the assertions of sovereignty by or on behalf of Kings and Kingdoms in the middle ages. A law of your own required a sovereign of your own. The French and American revolutions re-asserted a doctrine familiar in Scotland, that the overthrow of monarchs restored sovereignty to the people, who constituted themselves into a state or union of states through adopting a constitution by common consent. The sovereign state or union asserted itself as a nation state, the property of its sovereign people.