Introduction

This book is about the interaction between sovereign equality and two forms of hierarchy I have labelled anti-pluralism and legalised hegemony. The interplay of these ideas constitutes juridical sovereignty, i.e. the particular conception of sovereignty that international lawyers talk and write about. Prior to embarking on this discussion, it is important to be clear about the possible meanings ascribed to sovereign equality. To that end, I want, in this chapter, to unpack or disaggregate the principle of sovereign equality in order to bring out its various meanings.

In Chapter 3, I discuss the different meanings given to the term hierarchy by international lawyers and international relations scholars. I then outline two forms of hierarchy that provide the focus for the book. I term these anti-pluralism and legalised hegemony. I begin to explore the ways in which these legal hierarchies and some elements of sovereign equality are in tension within the international legal order.

The purpose of this present chapter is fourfold. I begin, in Section 1, by offering an orthodox account of sovereign equality; one that emphasises its centrality to the legal order, its special status and its doctrinal effects. This orthodox account is then contrasted with the juridical sovereignty presented in the remainder of the thesis. In Section 2, I show how sovereign equality arose and became influential in the post-Westphalia era. Here, I bring out its historical sources in, alternatively, positivism and naturalism, and its contemporary philosophical foundations in the domestic analogy from liberalism.