In General

Black’s Law Dictionary (Black 1990) defines autonomy as

[t]he political independence of a nation; the right (and condition) of power of self-government. The negation of a state of political influence from without or from foreign powers.

It defines sovereignty as

[t]he supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power by which any inde­pendent state is governed; supreme political authority; the supreme will; paramount control of the constitution and frame of government and its administration; the self-sufficient source of political power, from which all specific political powers are derived; the international independence of a state, combined with the right and power of regulating its internal affairs without foreign dictation; also a political society, or state, which is sovereign and independent. The power to do everything in a state without accountability—to make laws, to execute and to apply them, to impose and collect taxes and levy contributions, to make war or peace, to form treaties of alliance or of commerce with foreign nations, and the like... By ‘sovereignty' in its largest sense is meant supreme, absolute, uncontrollable power, the absolute right to govern. The word which by itself comes nearest to being the definition of ‘sovereignty' is will or voli­tion as applied to political affairs.

These definitions help us to tease out the meaning of sovereignty and autonomy only to a certain extent. The first, obvious, observation is that the concept of sovereignty is larger than that of autonomy, since sovereignty includes all that autonomy implies, but goes beyond that. The difference between them is thus a matter of degree: sovereignty is broader than auton­omy, as the latter is encompassed in the former. Second, the literal defini­tion of sovereignty reported above resembles its conceptual understanding, as an absolute, supreme and uncontrollable power, subject to no limita­tions, being the source of all other powers that exist within a given system. It is perhaps useful at this point to briefly retrace the intellectual history of sovereignty.

1.1