Sovereign People Research Articles

Africans and the Holocaust: Perceptions and Responses of Colonized and Sovereign Peoples. Edward Kissi

<i>Africans and the Holocaust: Perceptions and Responses of Colonized and Sovereign Peoples</i>. Edward Kissi

Enhancing water protection on Tribal lands

Multiple rulemaking iterations have led to variable definitions of the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS), a rule that determines which waterbodies receive federal protection under the Clean Water Act. The rulemaking process has incorporated American Indian Tribes as “stakeholders” rather than as sovereign peoples, compounding a colonial legacy that limits the ability of Indigenous peoples to choose appropriate strategies for water protection on Tribal lands. For example, protecting waters for Tribal beneficial uses requires applying both Western science and Indigenous knowledge to document patterns of waterbody connectivity and permanence, which underpin WOTUS policy. To honor the federal trust responsibility (a legal obligation) of the US Government to Tribes, policy should incorporate a parallel set of scientific standards for determining WOTUS on Tribal lands. These standards must recognize culturally distinct uses of waters and account for place‐based Indigenous knowledge. Examination of the intersection of the science supporting water protection, Indigenous sovereignty, and US policy has relevance to similar issues around the globe.

Future Heavy Rainfall and Flood Risks for Native Americans under Climate and Demographic Changes: A Case Study in Oklahoma

Abstract Climate change has posed inequitable risks to different communities. Among communities of color in the United States, Native Americans stand out because 1) they desire resources to sustain resilient nations and 2) they have developed nature-based solutions through experiences with local climate-related challenges, which can provide deep insight for the whole society. Projection of climate risks for Native Americans is essential to assess future risks and support their climate-ready nations, yet there has been lack of useable information. In this study, we projected three climate hazards—heavy rainfall, 2-yr floods, and flash floods—for tribal nations in Oklahoma. To break down into tribal jurisdictions, we utilize a coupled regional climate model at 4 km and flash-flood forecast model at 1 km. A hazard–exposure–vulnerability risk framework is applied to integrate both climate and demographic changes in a high-emissions scenario. It is found that 1) Indigenous people are the most vulnerable community in Oklahoma; 2) heavy rainfall and 2-yr floods have marked increases in risks at 501.1% and 632.6%, respectively, while flash floods have a moderate increase (296.4%); 3) Native Americans bear 68.0%, 64.3%, and 64.0% higher risks in heavy rainfall, 2-yr flooding, and flash flooding, respectively, than the general population in Oklahoma; 4) in comparing climate and demographic changes, it is seen that population growth leads to greater climate hazard risks than does climate change; and 5) emerging tribal nations are projected to have 10 times as much population, resulting in great exposures to climate extremes. This study can raise awareness of the impact of climate changes and draw attention to address climate injustice issues for minoritized communities. Significance Statement This study examines the impact of climate change on a marginalized community—Native Americans in Oklahoma, home to 39 federally recognized tribal nations. We utilized the high-resolution climate simulation at 4-km resolution and hydrologic simulation at 1-km resolution to aggregate three climate extremes to tribal jurisdictions. We find that climate and demographic changes disproportionately put many Native Americans at risk. The heavy rainfall, 2-yr floods, and flash floods are all projected to have increased risks by 501.1%, 632.6%, and 296.4%, respectively. Those risks are 68.0%, 64.3%, and 64.0% higher than the state average for the general population, respectively. We urge proper attention to tribal nations to address climate injustice issues as a whole with the acknowledgment of their distinct relationships to their homelands as sovereign peoples.

Mapuche Anticolonial Politics and Chile's Social Uprising

This essay examines milestones in the life history of one subject, Mauricio Lepin, and his involvement in the Chilean social uprising. By exploring the encounter of his trajectory with the uprising, the essay reveals under-explored dimensions of the anticolonial character of this critical event in Chile's history of the present. Lepin's case shows the entanglement of a long history of dispossession and resistance of the Mapuche people with a biographical story of social marginalization, political exclusion, and economic precariousness, shared with large majorities of Mapuche and non-Mapuche youth. It concludes by analyzing how, through the uprising, Lepin appears before himself as an actor among a multitude in struggle by putting into action the plural right to appear and the self-determination of a sovereign people.

Democracy as an institute of people’s government: national and international experience

The sovereign people exercise political power through their elected representatives. Democracy places the origin of political power in the collective will of citizens and is based on respect for their freedom and equality. It is clear that the exercise of political sovereignty in a democratic society requires that the people really consist of citizens. Democracy, as a political regime, requires that the people concerned consist of educated, autonomous, and free citizens, and that society be organized in a liberal way that allows for political pluralism through the possibility of free and open information and the existence of checks and balances. In a democratic society, citizenship is also a source of social ties.&#x0D; This term is used today to refer to any political system in which the people are sovereign. Democracy can also describe a form of society, a way of governing itself adopted by an organization or a system of values.&#x0D; Publicity consists in the fulfillment by the individual of his duties to the community in society. It implies devotion to public affairs, due to which everyone, claiming autonomy and freedom, believes that he should integrate into the national community and cooperate in public life. In a democratic society, power should be exercised for the people, that is, in their interests, in the common interests of the entire people, and not in the interests of dynasties, oligarchies or influential groups. On the basis of these foundations, democracy is carried out through the delegation of power to representatives of the people, elected by universal suffrage. Electoral right is a privileged instrument of exercising power by citizens. Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as «the government of the people by the people and for the people.» Thus, the governed are simultaneously rulers. The question is how, having delegated power to their representatives, can the people retain control?

87년 헌법 개정론의 의의와 한계

There is a need for a sequential and gradual process of constitutional reform, with targets that reflect the strong need for constitutional reform and the level of consensus at various levels.&#x0D; It is also necessary to respond to the fact that the flawed political representation system has been an essential problem of the 1987 Constitution. That is, efforts should be made not only to emphasize representation in the constitutional revision process, but also to ensure sufficient participation of the people, who hold the authorship of the constitution, in accordance with the principle of sovereign people, which is the highest principle for the formation of national power structure. As a realistic alternative, it is necessary to actively embrace the civic and deliberative public debate system in the constitutional amendment process rather than the traditional method. This can be achieved to a certain extent through legislative reforms such as the Constitutional Amendment Procedure Act or the Referendum Act, rather than constitutional amendments.&#x0D; In the end, we believe that sequential partial constitutional amendments, along with the democratic institutionalization of the constitutional amendment process, including the introduction of a deliberative public debate system, is a realistic alternative to inherit the achievements of the 1987 Constitution, improve its shortcomings, and build a new level of democratic republic.

Incompatible sovereigns: Populism, democracy and the two peoples

The article aims to investigate the problematic relationship between populism and democracy by comparing the conceptions of ‘the people’ and popular sovereignty which they presuppose. In the first two sections, the populist and the democratic ‘peoples’ are reconstructed, and the unbridgeable gap dividing them is highlighted. The discussion of the democratic people requires a concise analysis of the main contemporary democratic frameworks, including deliberative democracy, ‘neo-Roman’ republicanism, agonistic democracy. The article works out the implications of the incompatibility between the two ‘sovereign peoples’ identified, and concludes that such an incompatibility undercuts the kinship of populism and democracy. While populism is often said to intertwine with democracy in some way, the article argues that it significantly departs from democratic theory and practice, and belongs to a distinct conceptual space. It cannot be made to overlap with ‘illiberal democracy’, a ‘democratic myth’, a crude electoral majoritarianism, nor does it amount to hiding undemocratic policies into properly democratic justifications. The boundary dividing populism and democracy, therefore, starts unfolding at the level of the conception of the people. While democratic theory invariably assumes a people intended as simultaneously heterogeneous and united, populism conceives of the people as a moral whole, internally undifferentiated, whose homogeneity and intrinsic righteousness preclude the task of specifying what popular sovereignty ultimately means. Such specification, on the other hand, is inescapable for any democrat assuming the people as a composite unity. The last section addresses four possible objections to the argument, variously formulated by Ernesto Laclau and by scholars approaching populism from a post-Laclauian or discursive-performative perspective.

The principle of democracy and people's power in judicial law

In the modern era, only a political regime based on popular sovereignty, and the ultimate goal of which is the observance of the basic rights of the human person, can be considered democratic, as democratic. The sovereignty of the people, which is not aimed at the realization of human rights, necessarily leads to the free will of the majority. Full respect for human rights, in turn, is unattainable when the supreme political power does not belong to the people. The judiciary, as an organ of a democratic state, must be structured in accordance with both of these requirements. However, it should be noted that, unlike other state authorities, the judiciary has a notable feature. Although it is by definition the main guarantee of full respect for human rights, in most countries judges, with rare exceptions, are not elected by popular vote. In fact, the factor which unites the judicial power with the spirit of democracy (in the sense Montesquieu assigned to the word) is the outstanding attribute, the only one capable of ensuring the absence of suffrage: it is that public prestige, based on a wide moral respect, which in Roman civilization was called auctoriai. It is the legitimacy of respect and trust that causes people to judge. However, this special characteristic of judges, in the conditions of democracy, is essentially based on the independence and responsibility with which the state body as a whole, and the individual considered public agents, perform the political functions that the constitution, as the original manifestation of the will of the sovereign people, entrusts to them.&#x0D; Therefore, if we want to check how democratic the judiciary is, we must analyze its organization and its functioning, according to the fundamental requirements of independence. It is about the fact that the judiciary is generally independent when it is not subject to other powers of the state. In turn, judges are said to be independent when there is no hierarchical subordination between them, despite the multiplicity of instances and degrees of jurisdiction.

Sovereign Flows and the Obligation of Repayment

AbstractStephen Graham Jones’s 2020 novel, The Only Good Indians, depicts the haunting and killing of four Blackfeet friends—Ricky, Lewis, Cassidy, and Gabriel—by the spirit of an elk cow called “Elk Head Woman,” who stalks the men after they have killed her and her unborn calf. Their punishment, and the unpayability of their debt to the ghost, entail asking what lies beyond a regime of rights when those rights have been judged to be always already ignorable by settler-colonial society. But Elk Head Woman’s haunting also positions violence against the land (via fracking) and its more-than-human inhabitants as a metonym for settler-colonial violence against Indigenous women and girls. This essay asks what justice may look like beyond a framework of individual rights that create a temporal enclosure, tying people and harm to moments in time and specific places, arguing that the mobility of intergenerational debt and its unpayable reparations across times and places constitute a sovereign flow—the enduring movement of an ethical–political object (here, the elk-Blackfeet law) created between sovereign peoples (human and more-than-human) that persists apart from the settler-colonial state across whose legal and geographic spaces and time the flow moves.[The Only Good Indians’] fictional dramatizing of settler-Indigenous-nonhuman relations shows a world apart from settler-colonial social justice and forms of democratic inclusion: a haunting that . . . [refuses] violence against Indigenous women and ongoing forms of capitalistic extraction on tribal lands.

Dialogical theory of constitutional jurisdiction

The metaphor of dialogue between constitutional jurisdictions and legislatures was born in Canada to describe the role of the Supreme Court after the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. Then he was engaged in the Anglo-American academic space of comparative constitutional law. It is the relationship of the constitutional judiciary to the deliberative paradigm that raises questions, as it is difficult to see how the supervisory function of the judge and his authority to repeal or amend legislative texts can be anything other than a transfer within the limits of the separation of powers. A famous argument in the 1803 U.S. Supreme Court decision Marbury v. Madison: Justice Marshall postulated that the existence of a written Constitution, supreme since its adoption by a sovereign people, implied a judicial guarantee, even if the text did not state it, which applies to all legal acts. including the law. Constitutional justice developed mainly a century later, and then especially at the end of World War II, as did the theory that accompanied it. Those proposed in the context of continental Europe by the Austrian legal theorist Hans Kelsen, who participated in its creation in Austria in 1920. Schematically, the legal order is a hierarchically structured system of norms, each norm of which is valid when it is produced by a norm of a higher rank, up to the Constitution. The judge checks the validity of the rules within the system; A constitutional judge, whether a court specializing in this control or an ordinary judge headed by a universal Supreme Court, checks the conformity of all or part of the norms with the constitutional norm, thus performing an essential function in structuring the legal order. Outside the European Union, the dialogue metaphor has been reused in two contexts where it has played two very different roles, in the space of English-language comparative law and then in America. Then the theory of democratic deliberation was extended to the constitutional judge. In the dialogic conception, as in other variants of constitutionalism understood as cooperative, the case for constitutional revision derives from the ability of courts to help counter failures of inclusiveness and responsiveness to the political process, framed here in terms of "blind spots" and "inertia weights."

Beyond the coloniser’s model of the world: towards reworlding from the Global South

The reworlding of the world from the Global South directly challenges the resilient coloniser’s model of the world. The coloniser’s model of the world sustains the contemporary hierarchical and asymmetrical modern world system with Europe and North America at its apex of power. Consequently, reworlding from the Global South materialised as a counter-hegemonic initiative driven by struggles of the wretched of the earth for re-existence, liberation and freedom. The epic Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), which embraced ‘Black’ as an identity of a sovereign people opposed to racism, enslavement and colonialism, forms an ideal genealogy of reworlding from the Global South. This article reflects on evolving ideological, identitarian, cultural, intellectual and pan-African formations and initiatives of resisting empire and remaking the world after the empire. What is highlighted are freedom dreams, self-definition initiatives, critiques of the asymmetrically structured modern world and struggles and visions of re-membering and re-humanisation of the dismembered and dehumanised. The Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall movements, among many other initiatives and formations, have carried over the struggles for reworlding the world from the Global South.

5·18 민주화운동 당시 전남 경찰의 업무수행에 대한 현행법적 해석

This paper classifies data on the work performance of Jeonnam police by time during the May 18 Democratic Movement and examines whether it was legal in light of the current law related to the duties of police officials at the time. To this end, based on testimony from the Jeonnam Provincial Police report produced in 2017, this research analyzes how the Jeonnam police suppressed protests before the mass firing happening on May 21, 1980, decided to evacuate weapons, and how they performed their duties in the process of unit dissolution and return after the mass firing. As a result, it can be seen whether the Jeonnam police had limitations due to martial law in performing their duties at the time of May 18, but they actually set an example for the exercise of just public power to prioritize the safety of the sovereign people in a passive way of refraining from violence such as weapon evacuation and unit dissolution.

사법개혁과 개헌 방향에 대한 헌법적 관견

Since the enactment of the current constitution, our society has undergone many changes, and there has been a considerable gap between the constitutional norms and the constitutional reality. Reflecting this reality, political parties including the National Assembly are constantly discussing constitutional amendments. It is necessary to secure the efficiency, stability, continuity, and accountability of the state by reforming the power structure, which is the main cause of the state confusion in the turbulent domestic and foreign environment. Therefore, the revised constitution should contain the design for the national stability, prosperity and sustainable development of the Republic of Korea in the future. In order for a successful constitutional amendment to take place, first of all, the active participation of the sovereign people and the securing of democracy through the public debate led by the National Assembly, which is the representative agency, should be given priority. In order to do this, it is necessary to accurately diagnose the problems of the current constitution, which has been claimed by various experts such as the National Assembly and civil society, and to consider the various interests surrounding the amendment of the constitution. The reason why the judicial reform, which has been tried several times by the active efforts of the political party and sometimes at the request of the judiciary, has ended without great achievement is that the people's expectation and desire for judicial reform, the direction of the reform that the political party thinks, The main reason is that the contents of the reform are different. In the end, in order for judicial reform to be a real reform that conforms to the essence of the judiciary, it must be a reform that is appropriate to the needs and standards of the sovereign people, and at the same time, the judiciary itself recognizes its necessity. Furthermore, while the human rights and fundamental rights of the people are protected and respected through fair and neutral trials under the constitution and laws, the ultimate direction and goal of the constitutional amendment should be to decide and enjoy their lives as freely and equally as possible.

Sovereignty in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006)

In a 2013 interview, Alexis Wright explained the importance for Indigenous Australians of maintaining what she called a “sovereignty of the mind, even if we haven’t got sovereignty of the country or the land.” She went on to recount the story of an Indigenous leader who advised a meeting of Aboriginal people “if you think you are a sovereign people, act like it.” In her 2006 novel Carpentaria, Wright demonstrates how these two strands of Indigenous sovereignty are evident and practiced in contemporary Australia. Key Indigenous characters in the novel are revealed to both “think” sovereign and to “act like it.” Indigenous sovereignty, which has never been ceded but is still denied by Australian law, is performed on the land, in custom, in story and in song, in a multitude of ways. Wright thereby contributes to an assertion of sovereign, Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies in Australia. Significantly, cultural elders in Carpentaria are shown to take for granted their sovereign custodianship of Country regardless of who technically owns land within the colonised nation-space of the novel, thus revealing the rule of Aboriginal Law in Indigenous Australia over and against the assumed sovereign rule of the nation-state.

State and Nation: Shall the Twain Ever Meet?

This article traces the separate trajectories of the Indian state and the Indian nation since independence. The state machinery, largely inherited from colonial times, retained its imperial character, which facilitated the integration of the princely states. The negotiated transfer of power also created the myth that the state was prior to the nation whose sovereign people gave itself a new constitution. The Indian nation, on the other hand, was imagined differently in each regional language. Thus, while there was certainly the concept of an Indian nation, it looked different from each linguistic perspective. Further, the idea of the Indian nation was also contested in each region. This article surveys the political process by which these two trajectories were sought to be united, first in the period of Congress dominance until 1967, then under the authoritarian leadership of Indira Gandhi, followed by the relative loosening of the federal structure in the 1990s, and culminating in the present attempt to impose the Hindu majoritarian conception of the nation, nurtured in particular in the Hindi language, on the Indian nation state. Looking at the forces that oppose this hegemonic attempt, the article argues that only a genuinely federal conception of the nation in which each part is given equal respect can effectively challenge Hindutva hegemony.

Pré-souveraineté: Ukrainian content

The article attempts to single out key ideas that preceded the modern vision of sovereignty and to analyze their development in the context of state-legal development on Ukrainian lands. In particular, attention is drawn to such of them as the idea of “own production”, independence and self-sufficiency (J. Boden), the idea of social solidarity and the rule of law (L. Dyugy), the idea of a sovereign people in the state (St. Dnistryanskyi). In particular, their formalization in the privileges of the Union of Lublin is analyzed, according to which Kyiv, Volyn and Bratslav Voivodeships received: guarantees of inviolability of borders, the right to sue under the II Lithuanian Statute, the right to use the Russian (Old Ukrainian) language as the sole language of court and administration, etc. It is claimed that the existence of these rights ensured the further creation of the Russian identity of the inhabitants of Ukrainian territories already within the Commonwealth of Nations and the creation of the territorial and legal model of the Russian (Ukrainian) people. Attention is drawn to the Union of Brest in 1596 as an attempt to implement the idea of social solidarity, the Treaty of Zborivsk in 1649, which recorded the appearance of the Zaporizhzhya Army as a Cossack state, legalized its self-government and, in a certain way, legitimized it on the international arena and the Hadiac Agreement of 1658. It is concluded that it is they who determine the modus operandi of sovereignty or pré-souveraineté and that there is an invariably high index of the “sovereignty instinct” of the Ukrainian society, which confirms its implementation of the main ideas on which the modern idea of sovereignty is based. Key words: sovereignty, ideas of sovereignty, Ukrainian statehood, state-legal process.

Sovereign Traces, Volume 1: Not (Just) (An)Other ed. by Gordon Henry Jr. and Elizabeth LaPensée (review)

Reviewed by: Sovereign Traces, Volume 1: Not (Just) (An)Other ed. by Gordon Henry Jr. and Elizabeth LaPensée Lee Francis IV (bio) Sovereign Traces, Volume 1: Not (Just) (An)Other edited by Gordon Henry Jr. and Elizabeth LaPensée University of Manitoba Press, 2018 SCOTT MCCLOUD, the illustrator and comic book scholar describes the term "interdependent" in his seminal work Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993). He states that the best work in comics happens when words and images synchronize to convey something that neither can do separately. Interdependence is, essentially, the magic that happens when words and pictures come together. It's a fitting term to use when thinking about one of the first Indigenous literary graphic anthologies. Sovereign Traces is the culmination of several years of work by James Sinclair, Gordon Henry Jr., and Elizabeth LaPensée. The anthology features the work of nine Native literary luminaries and runs the creative spectrum from werewolves to Deer Woman to an unfortunate trickster. Each of the writers was partnered with an illustrator tasked with a tall order of bringing each of the works into the sequential graphic medium. To this end, Sovereign Traces is a rousing success. As McCloud articulates, the best sequential illustration work comes when the words and pictures build upon each other to create a synthesis that conveys a greater meaning beyond what is contained in the story or the art itself. If each of the works in the anthology remained only as words on a page, they would still shine with energy and articulation. The synthesis of words and illustrations elevates this work to something more luminous. The lead story is a black and white tale of after-school terror from the master of Indigenous horror, Stephen Graham Jones. As the opener for the anthology, Jones's story is a great way to warm up the reader with sly humor and solid illustrations (by Delicia Williams). As the anthology continues, the interplay between art and words is clearly evident in "Ice Tricksters" by Gerald Vizenor. Ever the Trickster, Vizenor's work is masterfully illustrated by GMB Chomichuk, who brings texture and deeper meaning to the meta-narratives that are a hallmark of Vizenor's scholarship and fiction. For example, there is a brilliant moment when a character lies down on the text. Over the next few panels, the text box shrinks, and the character changes positions in response to the shrinking text in a way that is both subtle and striking. The playful nature of these illustrations breaks the fourth wall and allows more [End Page 131] insight into the text itself. Near the end of the anthology, comic veteran Weshoyot Alvitre creates some of the most powerful imagery in the volume including a portrait of Poet Laureate Joy Harjo that truly captures the poetic soul of one of the finest writers of our age. The other pieces in the anthology are no less powerful and build on themes of resilience and empowerment. As each work individually achieves cohesion through interdependence so too does the anthology as a whole, as each story weaves and connects to the others, shining a positive light on the series' editors, Henry Jr. and LaPensée. The editors deftly allow the anthology to breathe and develop into something greater than the sum of its parts. Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have understood the importance of interdependence. The multitude of stories that speak of weavings and webs attests to the importance sovereign people placed on the connections between all things in all of Creation. As an example of Indigenous philosophical understandings, Sovereign Traces Volume 1 is a beautiful visual articulation of Indigenous ways of being and knowing and should be on the list for any lover of Indigenous literature, comics, and philosophy. You can find Sovereign Traces, Volume 1 at Red Planet Books and Comics or online through Michigan State University Press. [End Page 132] Lee Francis LEE FRANCIS IV is the CEO/Publisher for Red Planet Books and Comics, the only Native American comic shop in the world, and the founder of the Indigenous Comic Con. Copyright © 2022 Regents of the University of Minnesota

A legal principle of innovation? Need for an assessment against the principle of democracy

ABSTRACT In the EU sphere, the emergence in the political discourse of a potential innovation principle (‘IP’) has given rise to debates amongst scholars and stakeholders. The debate has mainly focused on the risk that an IP could pose to already-existing principles in EU law, such as the precautionary principle, and on the deemed deregulatory agenda of this industry-led initiative. As the IP is now making its way towards EU institutions and EU law, this article investigates the intuition that an IP could also encroach on democracy, namely the possibility for the sovereign people to make their own rules. Giving society a direction with respect to something as broad and ill-defined as ‘innovation’ indeed seems to fall within the core of politics. Based on a regulatory characterisation of the IP as a continuation of already-existing patterns, the article warns against possible further erosion of democracy.

The Democratic Limits of Populist Politics

The Democratic Limits of Populist Politics

The Shift of Indonesian Political Culture from Moral Legitimacy to Capital Legitimacy

This research is the result of a study of the shift in culture and political practices in Indonesia from moral legitimacy to capital legitimacy. This research is based on the concept of political culture, political theory, the practice of political meaning, and the views of several political observers. The results of research on the changes and political culture in Indonesia. The embodiment of political practice is related to political actors who practice what is called homo homini lupus which is justified. The shift from moral legitimacy to behavioral capital legitimacy is only measured in material terms and this is not in line with the Pancasila Democratic Ethics, which in principle argues that all political processes must be based on the value of struggle for the Indonesian State and Nation. Political pragmatism as it is today will be linked to political capitalization and liberalization, all of which are based on 2 (two) determinants, namely, money and power. Money and power are everything that must be obtained to maintain power itself, regardless of whether the process is against ethics and hurts the conscience of the sovereign people.