ABSTRACT
Insofar as Jeremy Bentham has a place in the traditional history of the idea of sovereignty that place depends on what he says in A Fragment on Government about the supreme power in political society and its relationship to law. Bentham acknowledges that, in sustaining such a situation as part of an operative system, a "great difficulty is to draw the boundary line between act and act"; and he refers the examination of this and cognate problems "to the particular head of constitutional law". It is noteworthy that Bentham now seems to reserve the term sovereignty itself for this ultimate constitutive power. The most interesting thing about Bentham's theory is in fact to be found in his qualifications of it, and especially in one basic exception to the illimitability of the supreme power. The general subject of the note is "public offences", among them offences against sovereignty. In this connection Bentham makes some remarks of great interest about sovereign power itself.
