The ISS Constitution states that the ISS is founded upon the principle of the sovereignty of the individual. It may therefore be necessary to give this principle some reasonable consideration to become a member. If you are considering the possibility of becoming drastically more empowered in the law making process than you have previously been, by having a vote that you can use whenever you wish instead of only once every few years, then you might consider it an act of conscience to develop your respect for the sovereignty of the individuals who may be asked to find it in their conscience to adhere to the laws that you participate in the creation of. If some people may even be coerced with threats of violence into obeying those laws, then perhaps your consideration of their sovereignty is an ethical duty that naturally comes with such powerful enfranchisement as a participant in the making of those laws.
The ISS Charter defines sovereignty (in the Appendix on page 8) as “the condition where there is no justifiable reason for any other party to claim authority to overwhelm a person’s or a society’s choice of method by which to write and adjudicate laws”.
The ISS Charter defines individual sovereignty (in the Appendix on page 9) as “the belief that ascertaining the moral justification or lack thereof for imposing any aspect of a method of writing and adjudicating laws upon a person who prefers a different method or even no method at all is predicated on assessing the person’s infringement of the liberty and happiness of others, either directly or through impacts to their communities or environments”.
Many courts in nations that claim to be democratic describe the recognition of the sovereignty of the people of the nation as an inherent and necessary component of a democratic society, Canada and the United States of America being two examples.
The Canada Interactive Legislature (CIL) makes the argument (paragraph 36, pages 9-10, here) that each member of society is endowed with a measure of sovereignty, rooted in the capacity to give reasonable consideration to the possibility that having concise laws written on behalf of society to be applicable to each individual member of society is an arrangement that may produce substantial benefits for each individual’s ability to live a contented life.
The CIL Charter states that the CIL regards the optimal enfranchisement of an individual, in the political processes of legislating constraints upon the conduct of others, as the equivalent of optimal respect for an aspect of the sovereignty (and dignity) of the individual.
The CIL Charter also states that the CIL opposes the presumption that the democratic sovereignty of an institution of law holds greater force in the law than the ancestrally inherited sovereignty of the indigenous People of a land.
A definition of sovereignty in Colins dictionary, for a person or institution, is “having the highest power in a country”. If we consider every individual to have the capacity to responsibly assert sovereignty, then every individual shares equally in being part of the highest power in the country: the People. However, if a major proportion of the People choose to impose a form of governance, that they have agreed upon, over an individual who does not consent to that form of governance, then the majority in favour of this imposition are not recognizing that individual as “having the highest power in the country”, any more than the individual is acknowledging the majority as “having the highest power in the country” by denying any validity to their wish to enact a law in the land where they live. This presents us with an uncomfortable situation in which we must embrace that neither the majority in such a situation nor the individual may have an absolutely justifiable position, and perhaps only a compromise can be considered ethical. Though Some may find it tough to admit, the expression, “laws of the land”, may be just an imaginary concept made up by humans, not an immutable reality. Majority rule and the sovereignty of the People may perhaps not always be identical.
To regard the optimal enfranchisement of an individual in society’s democratic process as a supportive stance toward the individual sovereignty of Others may be considered by Some to be the only pragmatic way of putting individual sovereignty into practice. Others may regard a situation where a person does not consent to a form of governance and is nonetheless forced to obey the laws enacted under that governance as being an unnecessary violation of individual sovereignty, and thus not entirely ethical, requiring some form of compromise with the individual.
If the interactive electoral system allows the People to deprive the elite of power that it formerly wielded, then a People whose minds have given sober contemplation to the principle of individual sovereignty may be capable of wielding that power so as to reduce the injustices against any individual by a collective law making majority in comparison to the injustices practiced by the elite prior to the introduction of a more interactive democratic law making system.