The Constitution and American Sovereignty
By Jeremy Rabkin, Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law
Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa, Contributing Editor
Text: http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

At a recent lecture sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship, law professor Jeremy Rabkin addressed the increasingly controversial and contentious issue of American sovereignty.

Rabkin traced the origin of the concept of sovereignty to the 16th century French jurist Jean Bodin who in his work, Six Books of the Republic, “set out an understanding of sovereignty whereby the King of France represented an independent political authority rather than owing allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor or to the Pope.”

Invoking President Lincoln, Rabkin emphasized that sovereignty is about “rightful authority.” For Americans, the U.S. Constitution is the “supreme law of the land” that cannot be superseded by treaties or international law. Yet, many U.S. political leaders and judges advocate American submission to international protocols and courts, thereby surrendering some aspects of American sovereignty in the name of an “abstract humanity.” Rabkin decried the notion of Spanish judges trying to arrest U.S. politicians for “war crimes,” calling it “preposterous” and “akin to piracy.”

Citing the European Union as an example, Rabkin warns that “it is possible to lose sovereignty rather quickly.” The danger in all of this, he said, is not a world tyranny, but “an undermining of the idea that national governments can protect people, with the result that people will start looking for defense elsewhere.”

“[T]he idea of allowing more and more of our policy to be made for us at international gatherings,” he concludes, is “a fundamental threat to lawful authority and so finally to liberty and property and all the other rights of individuals.”