THE IDEA OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY AND THE RIGHT OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION

Does the recognition of human rights in international law undermine th e traditional conception of international society as a society of sove reign states? The internal jurisdictional sovereignty of states is lim ited by those provisions and the non-intervention rule appears to be b reached, but the most fundamental notion of sovereignty for internatio nal society is the absolute sense of not being subject to a superior a uthority. The notion of absolute sovereignty is examined with regard t o the individual state on its own and it is argued that the only accep table notion of absolute sovereignty is that of the general will of a political association, which is an ideal entity with a built-in moral structure of equal rights. Applied to international society, it is arg ued that the constitutional sovereign can only be the collective of st ates; this constitutional authority must itself be grounded in the sov ereignty of the general will of international society, whose constitue nts are immediately the states but ultimately the general will of all the members of the different states. Since the general will is ideal w ith a built-in structure of equal rights of the human rights type, the recognition of human rights in international law is not a curtailment of this sovereignty but an expression of it.