This book brings to a culmination in later modern times the long and complicated history of ideas on sovereignty and the state that has occupied previous volumes in this series. The 19th and 20th centuries have witnessed the fruition of the legislative state par excellence as well as its companion concept, legislative sovereignty. This book tackles the ideas of numerous writers such as Bentham, Austin, Hegel, Marx, Savigny, Kelsen, Lenin, Bosanquet, Rawls, Hart, to mention a few, along with the views of many leaders like Gladstone, Lloyd George, Napoleon III, Bismarck, Cavour, Hitler, and Mussolini.

The common denominator of legislation is seen to underlie their concepts of sovereignty and the state across a diverse range of isms such as utilitarianism, positivism, idealism, socialism, and nationalism, in the 19th century and in related neo and anti-neo forms in the 20th century. This book's organization and classification of these and other issues is on the whole novel and comprehensive. As various reviewers have indicated, nothing of this magnitude on the subjects at hand has ever before been attempted. Finally, the book brings historical issues together to bear on the shape of sovereignty and the state today and into the future.