Federalism and International Law Through the Lens of Legal Pluralism‪.‬

I. INTRODUCTION Federalism in the United States is often discussed in terms of sovereignty. Thus, we are told that the colonies were originally completely separate sovereign entities and that though they ceded some authority to the federal government, they retained their sovereign prerogatives. Accordingly, so the story goes, we live in a system of 51 sovereignties, and discussions of federalism are about how best to negotiate the relative power of these different sovereign entities. (1)