Day 7: Popular Soveriegnty

Day Seven:  Popular Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the idea in political theory that one has authority of one’s land and recognition from other countries or international institutions. While we have individual rights founded on the idea that we are all sovereign individuals and we rule ourselves, it is not individuals who have sovereignty in a political sense but nations. The authors of the Constitution understood the need for international recognition of the new republic and painstakingly outlined the argument for popular sovereignty to an international community very hostile to the idea. Their argument builds on two thousand years of political theory from Aristotle and Cicero through Locke and Montesquieu until they are able to open the Constitution with a definitive “We the People of the United States,”   

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” - Declaration of Independence

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Preamble to the U.S. Constitution