The Concept of Sovereignty and International Law: A Case from the Perspective of Changing Global Governance Patterns

Abstract

This paper undertakes a doctrinal legal appraisal of the relationship between sovereignty, international law, and global governance, tracing that relationship from its positivist and Kelsenian theoretical roots through its treaty-based expression in the League of Nations Covenant, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the United Nations Charter. Using doctrinal legal research methods, the paper analyzes primary legal sources the UN Charter, the Nicaragua judgment of the International Court of Justice, and the constitutive instruments of the League of Nations  alongside secondary doctrinal commentary, to interrogate how the classical positivist account of sovereignty, resting on habitual obedience to an identifiable sovereign, has been reshaped by the rise of intergovernmental organizations, transnational corporations, and non-governmental organizations as governance actors. The analysis is then tested against very recent primary and institutional developments, including the UN80 reform process, the Pact for the Future, sustained paralysis within the UN Security Council, and contested unilateral uses of force among Charter signatories, together with emerging doctrinal debate over sovereignty in cyberspace and over climate-driven loss of state territory. The paper's central doctrinal finding is that sovereignty has not been negated by global governance; rather, it has been redefined as a bundle of voluntarily assumed legal obligations whose formal validity persists even where enforcement has weakened. The paper closes with doctrinal recommendations for how future legal scholarship should track the widening gap between the formal validity and the practical enforceability of international legal norms.

Keywords: sovereignty, global governance, international law, legal positivism, United Nations Charter, jus cogens.