Shaw, Malcolm Nathan (2003). International law. Cambridge University Press. p. 178. ISBN978-0-5215-3183-2. Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, 1 lays down the most widely accepted formulation of the criteria of statehood in international law. It note that the state as an international person should possess the following qualifications: '(a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with other states'.
Jasentuliyana, Nandasiri, ed. (1995). Perspectives on international law. Kluwer Law International. p. 20. So far as States are concerned, the traditional definitions provided for in the Montevideo Convention remain generally accepted.
Wheaton, Henry (1836). Elements of international law: with a sketch of the history of the science. Carey, Lea & Blanchard. p. 51. A sovereign state is generally defined to be any nation or people, whatever may be the form of its internal constitution, which governs itself independently of foreign powers.
"sovereign", The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004, archived from the original on 7 October 2015, retrieved 21 February 2010, adj. 1. Self-governing; independent: a sovereign state.
"sovereign", The New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN978-0-19-517077-1, adjective ... [ attrib. ] (of a nation or state) fully independent and determining its own affairs.
Pellet, Alain (1992). "The Opinions of the Badinter Arbitration Committee A Second Breath for the Self-Determination of Peoples". European Journal of International Law. 3 (1): 178–185. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.ejil.a035802. The Committee considers [...] that the state is commonly defined as a community which consists of a territory and a population subject to an organized political authority; that such a state is characterized by sovereignty; [...]
^Grant, Thomas D. (1999). "Chapter 1". The recognition of states: law and practice in debate and evolution. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.
^Hoch, Tomáš (2018). "Legitimization of Statehood and its Impact on Foreign Policy in De Facto States: A Case Study of Abkhazia". Iran & the Caucasus. 22 (4). Brill: 382–407. doi:10.1163/1573384X-20180406. JSTOR26626701.
^Fowler, Michael Ross; Bunck, Julie Marie (1996). "What constitutes the sovereign state?". Review of International Studies. 22 (4). Cambridge University Press (CUP): 381–404. doi:10.1017/s0260210500118637. S2CID145809847.