This morning on NPR, a professor of international law at the Fletcher
School (Tufts) was interviewed about the concept of the US "transferring
sovereignty to Iraqis."  He said that there's no such thing as partial
or limited sovereignty in international law.  There's either sovereignty
or it's not, but that an occupying nation certainly has varying degrees
of control even though it lacks sovereignty.  He noted that the US had
no sovereignty to transfer.  What the US has is control.  Also, of
course, sovereignty can exist despite the questionable legitimacy of the
government, as in a totalitarian regime.

John


-----Original Message-----
From: Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) Talk
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Petty, Ross
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 9:58 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SPAM-35] ::Re: NAFTA vs. Tribal Treaties

A few years ago, I co-taught a comparative federalism course with
someone from Scotland.  We compared the EU efforts to define federalism
with those that the US had gone through in the past 250+ years including
the original confederation and of course the Civil War.  We had a native
American in class who was terribly interested in the status "Indian
nations" and often compared it a bit with the status of Scotland in the
UK and EU.  Somewhere in all of this is a fascinating study of
sovereignty and what it means to be "a nation."

Ross D. Petty
Professor of Marketing Law
Babson College