The Idea of State Sovereignty and the Right of Humanitarian Intervention

Abstract

Does the recognition of human rights in international law undermine the traditional conception of international society as a society of sovereign states? The internal jurisdictional sovereignty of states is limited by those provisions and the non-intervention rule appears to be breached, but the most fundamental notion of sovereignty for international society is the absolute sense of not being subject to a superior authority. The notion of absolute sovereignty is examined with regard to the individual state on its own and it is argued that the only acceptable notion of absolute sovereignty is that of the general will of a political association, which is an ideal entity with a built-in moral structure of equal rights. Applied to international society, it is argued that the constitutional sovereign can only be the collective of states; this constitutional authority must itself be grounded in the sovereignty of the general will of international society, whose constituents are immediately the states but ultimately the general will of all the members of the different states. Since the general will is ideal with a built-in structure of equal rights of the human rights type, the recognition of human rights in international law is not a curtailment of this sovereignty but an expression of it.

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