Walled States, Waning Sovereignty
Brown's thesis, summarily put, is that modern-day walls are discredited markers of failing sovereignty. What is sovereignty? It is the revealed will of a political association to dispose of its own affairs. As that definition implies, it contains an irreducible element of the de facto. For Brown, sovereignty is now a ragged oriflamme, a willful but doomed exercise in self-persuasion.(Glen NeweyLondon Review of Books)