State Sovereignty as a Legal Status

State sovereignty is a sensitive and controversial concept in international law that has been described as ‘lacking meaningful specific content’ but also as ‘the basic constitutional doctrine’ of international law. One way of analysing legal concepts is by means of an inferential analysis: such an analysis looks to the inferential relationships of a concept in order to determine its meaning. This contribution offers a non-exhaustive inferential analysis of State sovereignty and suggests considering sovereignty in international law as a legal status that is independent of the legal consequences attaching to it. This view of sovereignty reveals a number of open questions regarding sovereignty and supports the conclusion that sovereignty is not a matter of degree (sovereign equality), unlimited or impervious to change