ABSTRACT: The idea of Self-Sovereign Identity emerged in 2016, but it has inspirations dating back centuries. This article explores the historic evolution of sovereignty and demonstrates how it can be modeled using approaches from other disciplines, including Living Systems Theory and Ostrom’s Principles. It then dovetails that with the topic of human rights to demonstrate many of the goals of the original advocacy for Self-Sovereign Identity. These are goals that we must reconsider today, ...
