There has never been so much talk of international law in the European public arena. The shortcomings of the contemporary international institutional order are at last clear for all to see, as are the interest, the possibility and our shared responsibility in rebuilding it. Unsurprisingly, given its centrality in international law from its modern and European origins, it is sovereignty which, as in every legal and political crisis, unleashes the passions : everyone is arguing for or against its compatibility with international law and its institutions. This otherwise beneficial tension is well known in the philosophy of international law. Sovereignty is neither mere political power nor pure national independence, still less autarky or ownership. As the ultimate authority to make law, sovereignty can, and indeed must, be limited by law (both national and international). Because of its liminal role between law and politics, however, it also remains political and institutional, and cannot and must not be entirely confused with legal validity.
As it happens, this final lecture in the first cycle of six years of lectures in International Law of Institutions proposes a reinterpretation of the principle of international law that has been its guiding thread : sovereignty. The lecture revisits the debate on the authority of the limit by looking at the specificity of sovereignty in international law from its origins and throughout its transformations. It's a seemingly counter-intuitive, even paradoxical specificity (due to the one-eyed conception, now set up as a fact or unsurpassable truth, of a state sovereignty, executive and exclusive), and yet remarkable : the plurality, then the relative equality of sovereignties. It's about the equality of sovereign peoples, of course, but also - and this will be the argument of the lecture - about their multiple sovereign public institutions, including states but also many others at both sub-national (e.g. towns or cantons) and international (e.g. regional international organizations) levels, and their multiple legislative, executive or judicial public bodies and representatives, whether national, sub-national or international. For a variety of reasons, to which we shall return, not all the ethical, legal and political dimensions and implications of this equality of sovereignties have yet been fully grasped or drawn out in the international institutional order since 1945, and particularly since decolonization, including by and within those States whose sovereignty has been inseparable from the outset. Properly understood and contextualized, placed in relation to one another and, above all, justified in terms of their role in the legal and political institution of power, these sovereignties could constitute the fictional springboard for a new chapter, not only more egalitarian, but also more habitable, in the history of the legal organization of the world's peoples.
This year's colloquium, devoted to the controversial issue of property in outer space, provided an opportunity to rethink the relationship between state sovereignty, jurisdiction and property in a context that is far removed from their terrestrial territories and, in principle, inappropriate.