Sorry I’m doing this on a phone. I only mean to quote you initial sentence, but Tapatalk makes that nigh-inpossible.
So: conflation of sovereignty and independence. With all due respect, a quick Google search indicates that independence is, indeed, a requirement of sovereignty (dictionary.com).
I accept that may be a shit source, and have no problem with being shown otherwise. Tech barriers prevent me researching fully, but I am interested.
Speaking as someone from an international law background, the concept of sovereignty as it applies to countries is not the same concept as applies to U.S. states. To use an analogy, some people do not believe that international law exists because ultimately, the enforcement of international law is largely a matter of volition, as opposed to domestic criminal law. Just because the concept of law as applied to nation-states is substantially different than the application of criminal law as applied to individuals, does not make international law any less valid. It just means the two concepts are not interchangeable even though the same word (“law”) can be applied to both concepts.
Sovereignty for countries is different than sovereignty for U.S. states, but that does not diminish the fact that sovereignty for states is a coherent and extant doctrine.
I’m sure Julius Streicher will be willing to give them lessons.
Enforcement of domestic marijuana laws in this country is entirely a matter of volition, and in many regions that volition is entirely lacking. I mean, just look at all of the stores in Missoula, Montana, selling medical marijuana completely above-board and in violation of Federal law.
(I’m sure we actually agree on this; I’m just pointing out the most obvious flaws in their argument.)
Eh? They don’t possess the power to defend their borders, either.
By volitional, I mean that international law is most often applied in countries volunteering to share common policies, whether that is a bilateral agreement on border claims or a convention on the treatment of diplomats. With a small number of exceptions, countries generally sign up to these various laws on their own accord.
Criminal law, on the other hand, are matters imposed on the vast majority of actors by a higher authority, the state. Those subject to criminal law never made a decision to submit themselves to it; which is fundamentally different than countries agreeing to uphold (or create) international law, which isn’t generally imposed by a higher authority (though common practice can create international obligations regardless of a country’s will).
Thought exercise: Western European nations have agreed to hand over some portion of their sovereign powers, right? If they kept doing so, is there a point at which they would cease in themselves to be sovereign entities? It seems to me that as long as France et. al. refuse to disband their identities as nations, and retain the ability to re-negotiate the powers they’ve given up, then they will always remain in some sense sovereign–which would be analogous to how the US states stand today.
Not really. France can withdraw from the EU tomorrow if it wants to. It’s now fairly well established that US states can’t withdraw from the union.
European countries will remain sovereign so long as they are countries. States do not have the same kind of sovereignty that countries do, as decided by Grant v. Lee.
Just because it is the same word, does not mean that the concepts are interchangeable.
How true is this? If France wanted to withdraw, but none of the other EU nations wanted them to, would it be “too bad, EU-losers” or “sorry, France, try again in another few years” or some sort of UK-style compromise where they’re in, but not as fully in as some of the others?
Streicher wasn’t arrested and executed by the international law police. His country lost a war, really, really badly, and the winners of the war decided to punish him for his participation in his country’s war and genocide.
Bit of a tautology, I think, but if you want to frame it in those terms: at what point to they cease to be countries, then?
Not unilaterally, no. But collectively, the states could agree to redraw their compact such that (say) Texas is allowed to withdraw. Heck, they could throw Texas out for that matter. And the federal government couldn’t say boo about it (constitutionally, that is. As others have noted, politically it’d likely be a far different matter).
I don’t think the EU allows for an exit clause, does it? Or even renegotiation among the constituents of whether a member could be allowed to withdraw. Of course France could do so politically or militarily if it could get away with it–but then some hypothetical state might be able to do so as well. In terms of what’s legal under their respective constitutions, though, it seems to me that a French withdrawal might be even more of a violation than a Texan unilateral secession.
(And if so, is Texas more sovereign than France? 
)
At which they lose recognizable borders, a population, international recognition, and/or a government that is intended to carry out state-like functions.
It isn’t a scientific equation, but the most relevant factor in this case would probably be the loss of international recognition.
Certainly. The Treaty on European Union has always included an exit clause, Article 50. I think some of the provisions are slightly different from the version in the Maastricht Treaty (the original TEU), but §1 is unchanged:
The other sections are mostly about how the terms of the withdrawal have to negotiated by the state party and the Council (effective withdrawal dates, return of EU property/funds held by the state party, return of state party property/funds held by the EU, and so on).
No, they don’t. But sovereignty is not a yes/no proposition. It’s a matter of degree.
Huh. Well, I guess it goes to show how crazy the euro project is, then, since a country is allowed to leave the EU itself but exit from the common currency is treated as unthinkable.
Well, that’s different. The addition (or subtraction) of any given member from the EU doesn’t make much difference to anyone else. The same is not true of the common currency.
As commonly understood by those in international relations, sovereignty basically is a yes or no question. (I could name a few counter examples, but those are few and far between.) Either it is a country or it is not.
Speaking as someone with an international relations background, it has been hard for me to rationalize nation-state sovereignty with U.S. state sovereignty, mostly because “degrees of sovereignty” to an IR person really only makes sense in a sub-federal framework. That’s why I’m suggesting that for the purposes of understanding the issue, sovereignty for a country should be considered a different concept than sovereignty for a state - just like how the term “state” can be used in several contexts but the concepts are not really interchangeable. After all, King Louis did not mean, “The principal sub-national actor in a federalist government? That’s me!”
No. The point of the Nuremberg Trials was that they weren’t merely “Victors’ Justice”, as the Nazis claimed.
The point was to put bad people away.