ABSTRACT
A different view would be that sovereignty and sovereign states, and the inexorable linkage of law with sovereignty and the state, have been but the passing phenomena of a few centuries that their passing is by no means regrettable. This will be the view stated in the present lecture. The order of presentation will be through consideration of some connected points. The first one is to locate sovereignty and the theory of sovereign statehood in the setting of legal theory, showing how developments in European Community law raise difficulties for some standard positions in legal theory. The second point is to proceed into some fresh conceptual analysis of sovereignty and statehood, moving forward from the juristic inheritance. The third is to discuss some consequences of a belief in Sovereign Statehood. The difference between the predominantly legal and the predominantly political conception of sovereignty now appears.
