The Division of Sovereignty-An American Concept

Sovereignty can take two forms. One is that sovereignty is the authority to rule. The other form is that sovereignty is the power to rule.

The sovereignty of the authority to wield political power is more in line with the federalist American ideal from a constitutional perspective than is the meaning of sovereignty as simply an expression of the POWER to rule, that is brute force. The authority to rule is in line with a concept of American liberty. This means that sovereignty, in its manifestation as the AUTHORITY to rule, can be DIVIDED within one polity. It is a sovereignty of JURISDICTION not of NATION.

Sovereignty in its other manifestation, that of the POWER to rule, is more in line with the modern vulgar way that is currently taught in our political science departments. That is, that politics is about POWER and who GETS IT!!!! This is usually called national sovereignty, or the sovereignty of the nation. This kind of sovereignty dismisses the notion of divided, shared, or concurrent sovereignty and subsumes all jurisdictional sovereignty into one centralized, administrative hub. It is this sovereignty that is the sovereignty of Empire and statism. It is difficult for individual liberty to exist for any length of time within a polity when this idea of sovereignty is in the ascendancy. It also breeds conflict between national and local authorities as neither recognizes that in the United States sovereignty must be jurisdictional and not territorial or national if it to be constitutional.

In the United States the People in their political capacity are Sovereign. They have the authority to rule. They also have the power to rule. However, they in their political capacity also have the authority to delegate power to any level and/or branch of government or reserve it for themselves. In this sense, sovereignty in our country is not divided, it rests ENTIRELY with the People in their political capacity. From a practical view however, the people disseminate the sovereignty among the levels and branches of government. Under the Constitution of the United States no sovereign power whatever exists within the government. It ALL resides with the People in their political capacity. The People then delegate certain powers to government as they see fit through a written constitution allowing the government to exercise certain powers in the name of the People of the United States.

The people of this country must never forget that their Liberty and that of countless Americans into the endless future depends upon their maintenance of their power to defend the authority of their sovereignty. Any people wallowing in an ignorant decadence will never remain free.