popular sovereignty

noun

1

: a doctrine in political theory that government is created by and subject to the will of the people

2

: a pre-Civil War doctrine asserting the right of the people living in a newly organized territory to decide by vote of their territorial legislature whether or not slavery would be permitted there

Examples of popular sovereignty in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The revolutions produced a set of political systems that balanced the privileges of property-owning elites, professional groups, and the church with broad popular sovereignty and individual rights—a balance that characterizes many political revolutions to this day. Loading... —Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs, 24 Oct. 2023

The revolutions produced a set of political systems that balanced the privileges of property-owning elites, professional groups, and the church with broad popular sovereignty and individual rights—a balance that characterizes many political revolutions to this day. —Maurizio Isabella, Foreign Affairs, 24 Oct. 2023

Each new nation-state meant a new claim of popular sovereignty, empowering the many to expropriate the property of the few. —Stephen Wertheim, Foreign Affairs, 16 Apr. 2019

This is a huge tension in the early republic, because the revolution had been about liberty, popular sovereignty, representative government. —Sophia Nguyen, Washington Post, 16 June 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1848, in the meaning defined at sense 1