Ernesto Garzón Valdés on Soberaignty: a Comment ; Ernesto Garzón Valdés sobre la soberanía: un comentario
The author discusses a paper by EGV concerning the legal limits, if any, of sovereignty. EGV distinguishes two concepts of sovereign: sovereign-0, i.e. the «first» legislator of the legal system at hand, and sovereign-1, i.e. the higher normative power within an already existent legal system. In his view, there is no sense in talking about legal limits as far as the sovereign-0 is concerned, since his normative acts are not governed by any previous legal rule, while the sovereign-1 is limited precisely by the legal rules that govern his acts. RG agrees with such a thesis. Nevertheless, he makes three points. (1) The same conclusion could be reached by means of a different strategy, i.e. by analyzing the meanings of «legal» in the context of the phrase «supreme legal authority». In a first sense, a «legal» authority is a law-creating one; in a second sense, a «legal» authority is an authority created by the law. Now, it is a matter of course that a supreme law-creating authority cannot be limited by the law, while any authority created by the law, although «supreme» (within the existent authorities), is necessarily limited by the legal rules by which it was created. (2) The artificial terminology proposed by EGV could be easily substituted by the standard terminology «constituent power» v. «constituted powers». (3) EGV's analysis of sovereignty does not apply to international sovereignty of states, since international sovereignty is a conditio sine qua non for the very existence of international obligations, hence legal limits, of states. ; El autor discute un ensayo de EGV sobre los límites jurídicos de la soberanía. EGV distingue dos conceptos de soberano: el soberano-0 (el legislador originario del sistema jurídico) y el soberano-1 (el poder más alto dentro de un sistema jurídico ya establecido). Ahora bien, no tiene sentido hablar de limitaciones jurídicas con referencia al soberano-0, ya que, por definición, sus actos normativos no están reglados por ninguna norma jurídica; en cambio, sí se puede hablar de ...