The Right of Sovereignty

Reviews / Votes

Daniel Lee's The Right of Sovereignty compels us to understand Bodin as a profoundly juridical thinker. The concept of legal sovereignty Lee disinters is more than an important contribution to our understanding of early modern legal and political theory. It also has great salience to our debates about sovereignty today. * David Dyzenhaus, University of Toronto * Daniel Lee has produced a real chef d'oeuvre. He presents to us Jean Bodin the lawyer whose idea of sovereignty was embedded in legal authority, not brute force. Pirates and robbers may constrain, but do not make a state. Situating Bodin's views of sovereign authority and of statehood in the context of Roman and continental jurisprudence, Daniel Lee has produced a vital but also eminently readable corrective to standard readings of one classic of legal and political thought. The demonstration that rulers have duties, even if they cannot be enforced by courts, and that tyrants are not sovereigns, resonates strongly also in the contemporary world. This is a hugely admirable work. * Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki * Bodin's great contribution to Western political thought was to create a synthetic theory of sovereignty from the disparate pieces contributed by his medieval forebears. Lee lays bare the complicated medieval substructure of Bodin's concept of sovereignty that was based on legal, theological, and philosophical concepts established in an age when sovereignty was not absolute but fragmented. Lee's splendid volume will not be the last book written about Bodin and sovereignty, but it will be a book that every future historian of both will have to deal. * Kenneth Pennington, Catholic University of America * Daniel Lee's new interpretation of the thought of Jean Bodin challenges the dominant interpretation of the French theorist as the prophet of 'classical' or 'Westphalian' sovereignty, in which the sovereign is above the law at home and free from standing obligations abroad. No, Lee argues, Bodin envisioned sovereign authority as subject to the rule of law, enmeshed in reciprocal rights and duties with its subjects, and bound by duties towards foreigners. Compelling, meticulous, and judiciously argued, Lee's interpretation will be absorbed widely and sympathetically well into the future, while, as a result, Bodin will be read far more widely and, yes, sympathetically. * Daniel Philpott, University of Notre Dame * The Right of Sovereignty, because of the methodical approach and the highly didactic style of the author, is accessible even to readers unfamiliar with Bodin's sources in Roman and canon law...Lee's work provides an invaluable companion for any scholar taking a dive into Bodin's reflection on the pre-Westphalian notion of sovereignty. * Philippe Baillargeon, Renaissance Quarterly *