Sovereignty RIP.

• Author: Kapesa, Pfokrelo

By Don Herzog

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020, 320 pages, $40, ISBN: 9780300247725

In Sovereignty RIP, Don Herzog exquisitely traces the journey of 'sovereignty taking the readers centuries back. Herzog argues that sovereignty which is revered as a guide to legal and political problems to maintain social order, may actually be causing more problems than it solves. The author does a magnificent job in illustrating when and how sovereignty emerged out of necessity as an 'appealing' concept and was eventually pushed to the background. He gives a vivid historical account of the events and struggles that forged sovereignty and then dismantled it. It is an excellent book for those interested in the study of constitutional doctrine and political theory.

The book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter summarizes the classic theory of sovereignty as 'unlimited, undivided and unaccountable;' the next three chapters unpack how sovereignty, over time, was made limited, divided, and accountable. The last chapter discusses the remnants of sovereignty, bringing to light some very important cases and examples in which the classic theory of sovereignty was invoked.

In the first chapter, Herzog brings to light the precarious events that may have necessitated the need for an all-encompassing power that called for an 'unlimited, undivided and unaccountable' sovereign. The pervasiveness and often gory powers and actions of a sovereign were considered a necessary evil in the larger context of the need to curb the menace of religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Great thinkers and philosophers, including Bodin and Hobbes, Grotius, and Pufendorf, among others, have in their writings and works propagated the idea that "social and political authority requires a sovereign authority" (p. 33) that is unlimited, undivided, and unaccountable. Herzog concedes that no state has actually embodied or functioned completely within the classic theory of sovereignty but maintains that the idea of absolute sovereignty was rather helpful in consolidating state power to preempt the vicious cycles of bloody conflicts.

In the following chapters, entitled "Limited," "Divided" and "Accountable," Herzog discusses the political and social milieu within which these three modifications of sovereignty were brought about through an explicit chronicling of the rise of constitutionalism, federalism, and the rule of law. In each of these chapters, Herzog...