Research Handbook on the Law and Politics of Sovereignty

This Research Handbook offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary account of sovereignty as one of the most contested concepts in law and politics. Bringing together leading scholars from a wide range of traditions, it examines sovereignty not only as a legal doctrine and political claim, but also as a symbolic form. Chapters trace the epigenesis of sovereignty from Ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium to the modern state, revealing how religious, metaphysical, and philosophical ideas shaped its development. A unique comparative section explores Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Confucian, Indigenous, and settler-colonial traditions, showing how different worlds imagine authority, legitimacy, and collective self-rule. The volume also investigates the functional, normative, and symbolic dimensions of sovereignty in contemporary constitutionalism, including debates on democratic authority, European integration, secession, illiberalism, and populism. Further contributions analyze sovereignty’s entanglement with exceptionalism, labor, biopolitics, and transconstitutionalism. The concluding chapters examine why sovereignty persists as a powerful political imaginary, assessing its critiques and rearticulations—from political theology and relational ethics to feminist, anarchist, and decolonial perspectives. The Research Handbook on the Law and Politics of Sovereignty is an essential resource for scholars and students of law, political theory, intellectual history, and international relations, as well as practitioners concerned with constitutionalism and global governance.