The View of Encyclopedia
Political Sovereignty: We here verge upon the political nature of sovereignty. What, fundamentally, is involved is the question of whether there ought to be, in any State, a power subject to no limits of any kind. But it is first necessary to remember that unlimited power is nowhere existent. Attention has always to be paid … Read more
Legal Sovereignty: The legal aspect of sovereignty is best examined by a statement of the form given to it by John Austin. In every legal analysis of the State, he argued, it is first of all necessary to discover in the given society that definite superior to which habitual obedience is rendered by the mass … Read more
Rights And Power: We reach here a problem perhaps as difficult as any in the realm of political science. A government, I have argued, is limited by the purposes that it serves. It has no moral authority to act ultra vires those purposes. It has no authority, for instance, to invade the right to freedom … Read more
The Realisation Of Rights: So armed, the citizen might hope to confront the State with at least the prospect of self-realisation. But it, is, of course, one thing to postulate these rights as essential, it is another thing to ensure their realisation. And that raises the central issue of the position of the State in … Read more
Particular rights: Yet all this, it may be said, is to dwell upon the heights of theory. It is one thing to show the notions a State must recognize if it is to move to the achievement of its purpose. It is a very different thing to show how that purpose is in fact to … Read more
Rights And The State: Rights so discussed seem to imply a State and an individual which strike a balance between their mutual claims. This is, in fact, to state the problem of rights in a fashion too narrow to express with accuracy the environment we encounter. For it is not merely as a member of … Read more
The Nature Of Rights: Every State is known by the rights that it maintains. Our method of judging its character lies, above all, in the contribution that it makes to the substance of man’s happiness. The State, therefore, is not, at least for political philosophy, simply a sovereign organization with the power to get its … Read more
From such an outlook we may derive a sense of the purpose embodied in the State. In this aspect it becomes an organization for enabling the mass of men to realize social good on the largest possible scale. Necessarily, it is clear, its functions are confined to promoting certain uniformities of conduct and the area … Read more
Definition of Law: In ordinary usage the term “law” is applied to any principle that is fixed, or uniform, or generally followed. It is often applied to the sequence of cause and effect observed in the world of natural phenomena. Thus, we speak of the law of gravitation, or of falling bodies, or of chemical … Read more
Sovereignty and Liberty: A discussion of sovereignty with civil and political rights leads naturally to a consideration of liberty. Sovereignty represents the authority of the state, liberty, the freedom of the individual The proper relation between the individual and the state has long been a problem on Which great thinkers have differed. Weather the individual … Read more