Sovereign power

“ Upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the dissolution of the ties of allegiance, the assumption of sovereign power, and the institution of civil government, are all acts of transcendent authority, which the people alone are competent to perform ”

“ Under our confederate system, sovereignty is that highest political power which, at its pleasure, creates governments and delegates authority to them. Sovereignty grants powers, but not sovereign powers ”

“ The Executive, or law-enforcing power.
Taken together we have what is called the Sovereign Power. The power of making laws, of saying what they mean, and of carrying them into execution being all that is ever needed for government.
And this, the Sovereign Power, may be concentrated in one person, whence we have the Czar, the Sultan, or the Autocrat; or it may be confined to a few—as in Sparta, or Genoa, or Venice, or Poland—constituting either an Aristocracy or an Oligarchy ”

“ Instead, therefore, of resting the supreme power of government in the hands of a person, or a class, making the former a monarch, and creating the other an aristocracy, those grand magistrates and senators of human liberty who framed the Constitution of the new American Nation, made the nation its own sovereign, and clothed it with the authority and majesty of self-government. ”

“ No obligation, then, as distinct from compulsion, to submit to an ostensibly sovereign power can consistently be founded on a theory according to which right either = simple power, or only differs from it, in the form of 'jus civile,' through being a power which an 'imperium' enables individuals to exercise as against each other. ”

“ In a word, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, let us collect them into a sovereign power, which may govern us by wise laws, may protect and defend all the members of the association, repel common enemies, and maintain a perpetual concord and harmony among us. ”

“ It has been shown that, in becoming parts of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered many of their essential parts of sovereignty. The right to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exercise exclusive judicial and legislative powers, were all functions of sovereign power. ”

“ By the sovereign power, as was before observed, is meant the making of laws; for wherever that power resides, all others must conform to, and be directed by it, whatever appearance the outward form and administration of the government may put on. ”

“ Sovereign power ought in all commonwealths to be absolute. So that it appeareth plainly, to my understanding, both from reason, and Scripture, that the sovereign power, whether placed in one man, as in monarchy, or in one assembly of men, as in popular, 195and aristocratical commonwealths, is as great, as possibly men can be imagined to make it. ”

“ The power which is committed to the hands of every citizen of this Commonwealth—the power of controlling public sentiment through his speech and of directing the public affairs through his vote—the power of national sovereignty in which he participates as one of the sovereign people—is a solemn trust. ”

“ Thus the acts of the sovereign are done in his name by his magistrates or other officers, among whom ambassadors are reckoned. And in the exercise of all those rights sovereign power consists.
VII. That power is called sovereign, whose actions are not subject to the controul of any other power, so as to be annulled at the pleasure of any other human will. The term ANY OTHER HUMAN WILL exempts the sovereign himself from this restriction, who may annul his own acts, as may also his successor, who enjoys the same right, having the same power and no other. ”

“ If, however, we should any where meet, either in the present times or the history of the past, with a state in which, by the principle of its constitutions, the nominal possessor of supreme authority and the executive is responsible to another body, then is the latter in fact the sovereign power, and not the former, which really is subordinate to the other. ”

“ Of the Office of the Sovereign Representative The office of the sovereign, be it a monarch or an assembly, consisteth in the end for which he was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people, to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account thereof to God, the Author of that law, and to none but Him. But by safety here is not meant a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which every man by lawful industry, without danger or hurt to the Commonwealth, shall acquire to himself.
And this is intended should be done, not by care applied to individuals, further than their protection from injuries when they shall complain; ”

“ For elective kings, are not sovereigns, but ministers of the sovereign; nor limited kings, sovereigns, but ministers of them that have the sovereign power: nor are those provinces which are in subjection to a democracy, or aristocracyaristocracy of another commonwealth, democratically or aristocratically governed, but monarchically. ”

“ There is one application of the doctrine of illimitable sovereignty which is of sufficient importance and interest to deserve special notice. Among the chief functions of sovereign power is legislation. ”

“ But from this grant I infer, as before hath been touched, that the sovereign, original, and foundation of civil power, lies in the people—whom they must needs mean by the civil power distinct from the government set up: and if so, that a people may erect and establish what form of government seems to them most meet for their civil condition. ”

“ In all cities or bodies politic not subordinate, but independent, that one man or one council, to whom the particular members have given that common power, is called their SOVEREIGN, and his power the sovereign power. ”

“ In each individual - 314 -state everybody admits the absolute necessity of having some sovereign power which shall make, declare, and administer the laws, and from whose action in any one of these aspects there shall be no appeal; a power that shall be strong enough to protect the rights and enforce the duties which it has authoritatively proclaimed and enjoined. ”

“ For if sovereign authority is derived formally from the consent of the people and not from God, who is the supreme and Eternal Principle of all power, it loses in the eyes of the governed its most august characteristic and degenerates into an artificial sovereignty which rests on unstable and shifting bases, namely, the will of those from whom it is said to be de- rived. ”

“ Through the structure of its government, and the character of those who exercise government authority, a State defines itself as a sovereign. "It is obviously essential to the independence of the States, and to their peace and tranquility, that their power to prescribe the qualifications of their own officers . ”

“ So long as the State preserves its power among the people, the people must render their obedience to the State,—to the sovereign in whom the contract was vested. The might of the political State makes right. ”

“ That every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign and included by force of the term, a right to employ all the means requisite and fairly applicable to the attainment of the ends of such power, and which are not precluded by restrictions and exceptions specified in the Constitution or not immoral, or not contrary to the essential ends of political society.... ”

“ The correctness of his sentiments on the subject of those errors, does him honour: such of his observations as are more particularly applicable to the present subject, are contained in the following passages.
“It is often said, that ‘the sovereign power and all other power is seated in the people.’ This idea is unhappily expressed. It should be—‘all power is derived from the people.’ They possess it only on the days of their elections. ”

“ When the functionaries of the government assemble here, they have no source of power but the constitution, which prescribes, defines, and limits their action, and constitutes them, in their aggregate capacity, a trust or agency, for the performance of certain duties confided to them by various States or communities. This government is, therefore, a confederacy of sovereign States, associating themselves together for mutual advantages. ”

“ The sovereign is the people as the state or body politic, and as the king holds from God only through the people, he is not properly sovereign, and is to be ranked with the ministry or government. Yet when the state delegates the full or chief governing power to the king, and makes him its sole or principal representative, he may, with sufficient accuracy for ordinary purposes, be called sovereign. ”

“ The actual exercise of authority by any sovereign whatever, and notably by Parliament, is bounded or controlled by two limitations. Of these the one is an external, and the other is an internal limitation. The external limit to the real power of a sovereign consists in the possibility or certainty that his subjects or a large number of them will disobey or resist his laws... ”

“ On the other side, the greatness of the state gives the depositaries of public authority greater temptations and additional means of abusing that authority, so that the more power is required by the government to control the people, the more power should there be in the sovereign to control the government. ”

“ But the forms of government which have most prevailed, are designated by the terms, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, or republic. These words severally indicate by what persons, and in what manner, the governing power of a state is exercised. This power is usually called the sovereign, or supreme power. Where kings rule, they are called sovereign; and where the power is in the hands of the people, the people are sovereign. ”

“ This body is the Republic, called by its members the state, the state when passive, the sovereign when active, a power in its relations with similar bodies. The partners are collectively called the people; they are citizens, as participants in the sovereign authority, and subjects as under obligation to the laws of the state.
The sovereign, then, is the general will; and each individual finds himself engaged in a double relationship—as a member of the sovereign. To the general will each partner must, by the terms of the contract, submit himself, without respect to his private inclinations. ”

“ The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them. ”

“ Hence, while the sovereignty resides inherently and inalienably in the people, it is a perversion of language to denominate the State, as a body politic or government, sovereign and independent.—Ibid., p. ”

“ But with these broad admissions, if we would compare the sovereignty acknowledged to exist in the mass of our people with the power claimed by other sovereignties, even by those which have been considered most purely democratic, we shall find a most essential difference. ”

“ While the government which the Constitution 145 established is one of enumerated powers, as to those powers it is a sovereign government, both in its choice of the means by which to exercise its powers and in its supremacy over all colliding or antagonistic powers. ”

“ In the strict sense of the term, however, entire sovereignty, or supreme power, exists only where power is exercised by one man, or a single body of men, uncontrolled or unrestrained by laws or by any other power. But in a more general sense, it is that power in a state which is superior to all other powers within the same. ”

“ The office of the sovereign, as an institution of such a society, is to protect those rights from invasion, either from without, from foreign nations, or from within, from members of the society who cease to behave as such. ”

“ But where the people had, by the constitution, a representative in the government, and a head, under which they could avail themselves of the wealth they acquired, and of the sense of their personal importance, this policy turned against the crown; it formed a new power to restrain the prerogative, to establish the government of law, and to exhibit a spectacle new in the history of mankind; monarchy mixed with republic, and extensive territory governed, during some ages, without military force. ”

“ Every law is a command, not only, but the command of a supreme authority; and it would be a singular contradiction in terms to speak of this supreme power as limited by law. How can the supreme author of law within a state himself be subject to law: how can the creature bind the creator? How can one refrain from smiling at the logical incapacity of those who speak of limitations to sovereignty, or, more absurdly still, of divisions of sovereignty?65 Is there a hierarchy of supremacies: can there be a co-ordination of creators? ”

“ When we listen so frequently to such abstract terms as “the majesty of the people,” “the sovereignty of the people,” whence the inference that “all power is derived from the people,” we can form no definite notions: it is “a confusion of words,” contradicting all the political experience which our studies or our observations furnish; for sovereignty is established to rule, to conduct, and to settle the vacillations and quick passions of the multitude. ”

“ A spirit of strict deference to the sovereign rights and dignity of every State, rather than a disposition to subordinate the States into a provincial relation to the central authority, should characterize all our exercise of the respective powers temporarily vested in us as a sacred trust from the generous confidence of our constituents. ”

“ No monarchical throne presses these States together, no iron chain of military power encircles them; they live and stand under a government popular in its form, representative in its character, founded upon principles of equality, and so constructed, we hope, as to last for ever. ”

“ This sovereign, this person or combination of persons, universally occurring in all independent political communities, has in all such communities one characteristic, common to all the shapes sovereignty may take, the possession of irresistible force, not necessarily exerted, but capable of being exerted. ”