Popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty is the doctrine that government is created by and subject to the will of the people, who are the source of all political power.
Popular sovereignty is an idea that dates to the social contract school (mid-1600s to mid 1700s). The central tenet is that legitimacy of rule or of law is based on the consent of the governed. Popular sovereignty is thus a basic tenet of most democracies.
Most republics and many constitutional monarchies are based popular sovereignty. Still, some states may in theory be based on popular sovereignty, but may in practice ignore it; such was the case of the former USSR.
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were the most influential thinkers of this school, all postulating that individuals choose to enter into a social contract with one another, thus voluntarily giving up some rights in return for protection from the dangers and hazards of a state of nature.
In U.S. history, the terms popular sovereignty and the equivalent but more disparaging squatter sovereignty refer generally to the right claimed by the squatters, or actual residents, of a territory of the United States to make their own laws, and in particular to the idea championed by Stephen A. Douglas that the residents of each territory were allowed to determine whether it would accept or reject the practice of slavery.
