Notes On Sovereignty From the Standpoint of the State and of the World

by Robert Lansing

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102 pages, Paperback

Published March 4, 2019

About the author

Robert Lansing (1864-1928) was born in Watertown, New York. He graduated from Amherst College in 1886 and was admitted to the bar in 1889. From then until 1907 he was a member of the law firm of Lansing & Lansing at Watertown. Lansing served in the position of Legal Advisor to the State Department at the outbreak of World War I where he vigourously advocated against Britain's policy of blockade and in favour of the principals of freedom of the seas and the rights of neutral nations. He then served as United States Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson between 1915 and 1920. He was nominated to the office after William Jennings Bryan's resignation. He negotiated the Lansing-Ishii Agreement with Japan in 1917 and was a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at Paris in 1919.

Reviews

[Lord_Humungus · Rating 1 out of 5]

A short book on sovereignty, written by Robert Lansing, Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson.
Almost everything it says is tautological, and on the rare occasions it is not, it turns to be false.

For Lansing, sovereignty in a state is "the power, to the extent of the natural ability of its possessor, to do anything in a state without accountability."

This stems from superior physical strength, from the threat of brute force. Thus, the sovereign is the person or group of people who have the ability to make all others obey. From there, all other propositions follow tautologically, such as "The real sovereign cannot divest himself of his sovereignty nor can he be divested of it and exist", and many others.

If there is a dictator in a state and he is overthrown by a popular revolution, has the state changed its sovereign? According to Lansing, it hasn't: the dictator was only the "artificial sovereign." The real sovereign has always been the group of people who physically had the power to overthrow him. By making the revolution, it became clear who the real sovereign was. With such a tautological doctrine you can't be wrong, but you can't say anything useful either...

I think this book has had the opposite effect on me than the author intended. I now think that sovereignty is not a useful concept. Or more exactly, there are two conceptions of sovereignty: sovereignty as a right and sovereignty as power. If you're talking about power, like Lansing, it's better to use the word "power" instead, because "sovereignty" is more confusing, and adds absolutely nothing. Only if you're being normative, and talking about sovereignty as a right, is when the useful discussion can begin.

You can skip the book. Nothing to see here.