Formation of the ideas of state sovereignty in the western European political and legal thought

The author analyzes the formation of the views of Western European thinkers of the remote past on the nature and content of state sovereignty. The paper reviews the statements on this and related issues of J. Bodin, Th. Hobbes, H. Grotius and G. Parker, this last previously was little known in domestic theory. The author pays attention to not only the main content of political and legal concepts of incunabula of sovereignty notions, but also describes some details, which were not adequately reflected in the Russian legal science. A comparative analysis of these statements takes a comprehensive and balanced form in the article. The author remarks that at dawn of the formation of sovereignty ideas in the Western European political and legal thought, there were both common positions and significant differences; but almost all the authors directly or indirectly dealing with this issue recognized the highest value of this category for public authorities of that period.