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SOVEREIGNTY Definition & Legal Meaning

Definition & Citations:

The possession of sovereign power; supreme political authority; paramount control of the constitution and frame of government and Its administration ; the self-sufficient source of political power, from which all specific political powers are derived; the international independence of a state, combined with the right and power of regulating its internal affairs without foreign dictation; also a political society, or state, which is sovereign and independent. See Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 455, 1 L. Ed. 440: Union Bank v. Hill, 3 Cold. (Tenn.) 325; Moore v. Shaw, 17 Cal. 218, 79 Am. Dec. 123. “The freedom of the nation has its correlate in the sovereignty of the nation. Political sovereignty is the assertion of the self-determinate will of the organic people, and in this there is the manifestation of its freedom. It is in and through the determination of its sovereignty that the order of the nation is constituted and maintained.” Mulford, Nation, p. 129. “If a determinate human superior, not in a habit of obedience to a like superior, receive habitual obedience from the bulk of a given society, that determinate superior is sovereign in that society, and the society (including the superior) is a society political and independent.” Aust. Jur.

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