Dictum of the day, or on death of self-glorifying sovereignty

The Basic Law abandons a self-serving and self-glorifying concept of sovereign statehood (...) It breaks with all forms of political Machiavellianism and with a rigid concept of sovereignty which until the beginning of the 20th century regarded the right to wage war - even a war of aggression - as a right due to a sovereign state as a matter of course (...)

Das Bundesverfassungsgericht, 2 BvE 2/08 (Lisbon decision), 30 June 2009, para. 223.