Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the principle that the legitimacy of the state is created and sustained by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated with republicanism and social contract philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Popular sovereignty expresses a concept and does not necessarily reflect or describe a political reality. It is usually contrasted with the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, and with individual sovereignty.
Benjamin Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, "In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns."
The term "squatter sovereignty" is used by Jefferson Davis in his book A Short History of the Confederate States of America. This term referred to the influx of new citizens in order to manipulate the ultimate sovereign votes. At the 1860 Democratic National Convention, William L. Yancey used the phrase "squatter sovereignty" in a speech he gave.
Popular sovereignty also can be described as the voice of the people.
Read more about Popular Sovereignty: Origins, Popular Sovereignty in The United States, 1850s
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or sovereignty:
“If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“If Thou be more than hate or atmosphere
Step forth in splendor, mortify our wolves.
Or we assume a sovereignty ourselves.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)