The Notion of Legal Sovereignty, Political Sovereignty and Popular Sovereignty

The Preamble to the Constitution of India opens with three words — “We, the people” — before a single organ of government is even mentioned. That is not decoration. It is a claim about where sovereignty actually comes from, and it is different from the claim a court makes when it says Parliament's law is binding. This topic is about telling those two claims, and a third, apart.

In two minutes

Legal sovereignty is de jure — the authority the law recognises as final (in India, the Constitution and the institutions empowered to amend it); political sovereignty is de facto — wherever actual power to compel obedience really sits; and popular sovereignty is the democratic idea that ultimate authority originates with the people themselves.

The rest of this chapter

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