James Madison and State Sovereignty, 1780–1781

Few issues in early American politics were more contentious than the issue of sovereignty. This article argues that James Madison, during his first year in Congress, articulated and defended a vision of state sovereignty derived in part from eighteenth-century law of nations theory. Madison believed that the people of the states were sovereign, and he defended that position in a number of particular controversies in 1780–81. During his national political career, Madison returned to his early understanding of state sovereignty. Many accounts of Madison have missed the importance of the concept of state sovereignty in his thought, preferring to interpret him in a more nationalistic direction. But Madison’s position on state sovereignty laid important precedents for the use of that concept in American politics.