ABSTRACT
In the received view, sovereignty in modernity is an exclusive feature of nation-states and all legal authority is exercised by national institutions or by a body whose authority has been delegated to it by a nation-state. 29 International law, including the international economic law administered by the WTO, would be simply the accumulation or aggregation of delegated or transferred authority and would have no ‘life’ of its own. Similarly, claims to legal authority by local communities and indigenous groups would be obliterated by the establishment of the state – and what we see as remnants of that authority would in fact be delegated to the group or otherwise permitted by the state. In all of this, the nation-state would be the unmoved mover – and its sovereignty prime and generative of all law. Much then, has been invested in the notion of the sovereign nation-state as the foundation of the modern legal order at both the domestic and international levels. Indeed the idea of the sovereign state forms
international.
