The term "the people" refers to the

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

or common mass of people of a

polity A polity is a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of political Institutionalisation, institutionalized social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize resources. A polity can be any group of people org ...

. As such it is a

concept A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, ...

human rights law International human rights law (IHRL) is the body of international law designed to promote human rights on social, regional, and domestic levels. As a form of international law, international human rights law is primarily made up of treaties, ag ...

international law International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of Rule of law, rules, norms, Customary law, legal customs and standards that State (polity), states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generall ...

as well as

constitutional law Constitutional law is a body of law which defines the role, powers, and structure of different entities within a state, namely, the executive, the parliament or legislature, and the judiciary; as well as the basic rights of citizens and, in ...

, particularly used for claims of

popular sovereignty Popular sovereignty is the principle that the leaders of a state and its government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associativ ...

. In contrast, a people is any plurality of

persons A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such ...

considered as a whole. Used in

politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

and

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

, the term "a people" refers to the

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an e ...

community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

of an

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

or nation.

Concepts

Legal

Chapter One, Article One of the Charter of the United Nations states that "peoples" have the right to self-determination. Though the mere status as peoples and the right to self-determination, as for example in the case of Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous peoples (''peoples'', as in all groups of indigenous people, not merely all indigenous persons as in ''indigenous people''), does not automatically provide for independence, independent sovereignty and therefore secession. Indeed, judge Ivor Jennings identified the inherent problems in the right of "peoples" to self-determination, as it requires pre-defining a said "people".

Constitutional

Both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire used the Latin term , (the Senate and People of Rome). This term was fixed abbreviated (SPQR) to Roman legionary standards, and even after the Roman Emperors achieved a state of total personal autocracy, they continued to wield their power in the name of the Senate and People of Rome. The term People's Republic, used since late modernity, is a name used by sovereign state, states, which particularly identify constitutionally with a form of socialism.

Judicial

In criminal law, in certain jurisdictions, criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of ''the People''. Several U.S. states, including California, Illinois, and New York (state), New York, use this style. Citations outside the jurisdictions in question usually substitute the name of the state for the words "the People" in the case captions. Four states — Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky — refer to themselves as ''the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth'' in case captions and legal process. Other states, such as Indiana, typically refer to themselves as ''the State'' in case captions and legal process. Outside the United States, criminal trials in Republic of Ireland, Ireland and the Philippines are prosecuted in the name of the people of their respective states. The political theory underlying this format is that criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the sovereignty, sovereign; thus, in these U.S. states, the "people" are judged to be the sovereign, even as in the United Kingdom and other dependencies of the British monarchy, British Crown, criminal prosecutions are typically brought in the name of the Crown. "The people" identifies the entire body of the citizens of a jurisdiction invested with political power or gathered for political purposes.''Black's Law Dictionary'', 5th ed., "People".

References

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