The Austinian theory of law Author:John Austin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Purpose of lecture Thedis- imfmark of rover- pendent THE DEFINITION OF SOVEREIGNTY 219. In the present lecture I explain the marks ... more »or characters which distinguish positive laws, or laws strictly so called. And, in order to an explanation of the marks which distinguish positive laws, I shall analyse the expression sovereignty, the correlative expression subjection, and the inseparably connected expression independent political society. For the essential difference of a positive law (or the difference that severs it from a law which is not a positive law) may be stated thus. Every positive law, or every law simply and strictly so called, is set by a sovereign person, or a sovereign body of persons, to a member or members of the independent political society wherein that person or body is sovereign or supreme. Or (changing the expression) it is set by a monarch, or sovereign number, to a person or persons in a state of subjection to its author. Even though it sprang directly from another fountain or source, it is a positive law, or a law strictly so called, by the institution of that present sovereign in the character of political superior. Or (borrowing the language of Hobbes) ' the legislator is he, not by whose authority the law was first made, but by whose authority it continues to be a law.' 220. The superiority which is styled sovereignty, and the independent political society which sovereignty implies, is distinguished from other superiority, and from other society, by the following marks or characters. — 1. The bulk of the given society are in a habit of obedience or submission to a determinate and common superior : let that common political superior be a certain individual person, or a certain body society- or aggregate of individual perso...« less