ABSTRACT
The concept of legal sovereignty suffers the defect of presupposing a basic stability in social relations — a stability that would make the very concept of sovereignty unnecessary. Legal sovereignty has become closely linked with the ‘democratic’ view of sovereignty, even though its requirements are such that ‘democracy’ becomes essentially a description of a ceremonious induction of a government into office at more or less regular intervals. The sovereign authority derives its power from and acts according to a ‘public interest’ theory which is linked with a private interest theory of human behavior. Sovereignty has certainly operated throughout the history of modern democracy, but past insistence on the ‘sovereignty of the people’, which is a denial of the classical concept, has certainly led to completely unnecessary opposition to lawful government and deliberate acts of civil disobedience.
