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A sovereign state is a state that has the supreme sovereignty or ultimate authority over a territory. [1] It is commonly understood that a sovereign state is independent . [ 2 ] When referring to a specific polity , the term " country " may also refer to a constituent country, or a dependent territory .
With "sovereignty" meaning holding supreme, independent authority over a region or state, "internal sovereignty" refers to the internal affairs of the state and the location of supreme power within it. [47] A state that has internal sovereignty is one with a government that has been elected by the people and has the popular legitimacy.
The dominant customary international law standard of statehood is the declarative theory of statehood, which was codified by the Montevideo Convention of 1933. The Convention defines the state as a person of international law if it "possess[es] the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) a capacity to enter into relations with the ...
While each of the state governments within the United States holds legal and administrative jurisdiction within its bounds, [3] they are not sovereign in the Westphalian sense in international law which says that each state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non ...
In any event, Congress needs to make laws defining if the extended waters, including oil and mineral rights, are under state or federal control. [22] [23] The primary enforcer of maritime law is the U.S. Coast Guard. Federal and state governments share economic and regulatory jurisdiction over the waters owned by the country. (See tidelands.)
A state can be distinguished from a government. The state is the organization while the government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time. [50] [51] [52] That is, governments are the means through which
Popular sovereignty is the principle that the leaders of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the source of all political legitimacy. Citizens may unite and offer to delegate a portion of their sovereign powers and duties to those who wish to serve as officers of the state, contingent on the ...
The word is borrowed from Old French souverain, which is ultimately derived from the Latin superānus, meaning 'above'. The roles of a sovereign vary from monarch, ruler or head of state to head of municipal government or head of a chivalric order. As a result, the word sovereignty has more recently also come to mean independence or autonomy. [1]