Article V and the Question of Sovereignty Part II

Article V Blog ^ | March 6th 2017 | Rodney Dodsworth

[Jacquerie]

The Declaration of Independence did not answer the question of American sovereignty very well. Despite the recognized right of the people to alter or abolish their form of government, the question of sovereignty continued to be an important theoretical question of politics throughout the following decade. Some held that legal and political sovereignty devolved to Congress. Others believed it belonged to the mass of the people.

Unlike today, the concept of special conventions of the people as legal sovereign hardly existed in the early 1770s. Instead, the various congresses, and conventions of representatives from the colonies, or any other gatherings not sanctioned by royal governors were outside the law. At best, they were regarded as defective lawmaking bodies; at worst, they were treasonous.

Still others, the majority, thought legal and political sovereignty fell upon the remnants of the colonial legislatures. These remnants established sovereignty through convention, meaning members of the previously chartered colonial governments gathered to form new governments. As a practical matter, this was an adaptation of our pre-war concept of sovereignty in which the individual state legislatures plus the person of the King, not the King in Parliament, were legally and politically sovereign over the American colonies. Upon independence, and without a King, twelve state governments assumed the entirety of constitutional and statutory, legal and political lawmaking powers.

Through the passage of statutory law, (political sovereignty) each state eventually joined in confederation. In this treaty of friendship, thirteen republics appeared to grant extensive sovereign powers to congress. Congress decided peace/war, and foreign policy; it could build and keep a navy, borrow money, ask the states for men and money, and it performed some other duties of a general interest. Considering our experience with Parliament and George III, this was a seemingly generous allotment of authority.

[vooch]

the people are sovereign

state power derives from the people NOT the other way around