John Austin's Theory of Sovereignty

John Austin looked at Britain, where a Crown, a House of Lords and a House of Commons all seemed to share power, and asked one blunt question: whom, in the end, does everybody actually obey? His answer — a single, determinate sovereign, habitually obeyed and obeying no one else — became the most tested theory of sovereignty in this entire paper.

In two minutes

John Austin defined the sovereign as a determinate person or body of persons who receives habitual obedience from the bulk of a political society, and who is not in the habit of obedience to any other earthly authority — and law, on his theory, is simply that sovereign's command, backed by a sanction.

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