The system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and may enforce by the authority is known as law-illustrate &explain
Introduction
Laws refer to the scheme of guidelines or rules that are recognized by a certain community or country as the regulator of the activities of its members. Usually, penalties are imposed on any individuals who break the laws. Laws forced a group of people to maintain the order, promote discipline and ensure safety. From the definition of law we see that law is a body of rules fixed and enforced by a sovereign political or national authority.[1] So for enforcing a law there should be a sovereign authority if there is not having a sovereign authority the law cannot be exist or it will not be followed strictly. Dutch legal theorist Grotius explained in the seventeenth century, a sovereign power is one that has legal authority over a domain but is not subject to any higher human authority. And legal authority means, in this context, the authority to make law and to enforce it, by virtue of an actual monopoly of coercive power together with the general acceptance, by those governed, of the sovereign’s exclusive right to employ it
Origin of law
The history of law is the history of our race, and the embodiment of its experience. It is the most unerring monument of its wisdom and of its frequent want of wisdom. The best thought of a people is to be found in its legislation; its daily life is best mirrored in its usages and customs, which constitute the law of its ordinary transactions. WE can say that the origin of law has started from the incident between almighty ALLAH and Prophet ADAM. ALLAH gave order to ADAM that he will able to eat any food except one particular fruit but ADAM violated that law and punished. So if anyone breaks any law he will be punished and for giving him punishment there should be a sovereign authority who published that law and who will implement the punishment. The history of law of different communities has developed in distinct ways, reflecting the prevalent socio-political norms and values of the society which they regulate. The history of “laws” of pre-literate African societies, for example, is significantly different from the history of laws of a developed Western democracy. The history of law is closely connected to the development of civilization. Ancient Egyptian law, dating as far back as 3000 BC, contained a civil code that was probably broken into twelve books. It was based on the concept of Ma’at, characterised by tradition, rhetorical speech, social equality and impartiality.[2] By the 22nd century BC, the ancient Sumerian ruler Ur-Nammu had formulated the first law code, which consisted of casuistic statements. Around 1760 BC, King Hammurabi further developed Babylonian law, by codifying and inscribing it in stone. Hammurabi placed several copies of his law code throughout the kingdom of Babylon as stelae, for the entire public to see; this became known as the Codex Hammurabi. The most intact copy of these stelae was discovered in the 19th century by British Assyriologists, and has since been fully transliterated and translated into various languages, including English, German, and French.[80] So if we see the history we find that all the laws are written such as English law, Danish law, Chinese law or Greek law that means every law was published by a sovereign authority.
Definition of Law :
Wikipedia
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior.
Oxford Dictionary
“A rule or system of rules recognized by a country or community as regulating the actions of its members and enforced by the imposition of penalties”.
Jone’s Blackstone
Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; whether animate or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.
Salmond
“Law is the body of principles recognized and applied by the State in the administration of justice.’
So the law is the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation or of custom and policies recognized and enforced by judicial decision.
Sovereign authority
Sovereignty, though its meanings have varied across history, also has a core meaning, supreme authority within a territory. It is a modern notion of political authority. Historical variants can be understood along three dimensions — the holder of sovereignty, the absoluteness of sovereignty, and the internal and external dimensions of sovereignty. The state is the political institution in which sovereignty is embodied. An assemblage of states forms a sovereign states system.[3]
Entity (such as a parliament) whose actions has the legal force, and in whom resides the ultimate power to lay down, modify, and rescind the laws of the land is called sovereign authority.
Sovereignty is the central organizing principle of the system of states. However, it is also one of the most poorly understood concepts in international relations. This confusion emerges from at least two sources. First, as will be discussed below, sovereignty is in fact a relatively recent innovation connected to the emergence of the nation-state as the primary unit of political organization. Second, what is more, a number of contemporary issues have placed increasing limits on the exercise of sovereign authority. These two factors raise questions about the fixity of the concept of sovereignty often assumed by international relations scholars. A more sophisticated view of sovereignty now envisions states and non state actors as engaged in a continual process of renegotiating the nature of sovereignty.[4]
There is essentially an internal and external dimension of sovereignty. Internally, a sovereign government is a fixed authority with a settled population that possesses a monopoly on the use of force. It is the supreme authority within its territory. Externally, sovereignty is the entry ticket into the society of states. Recognition on the part of other states helps to ensure territorial integrity and is the entree into participating in diplomacy and international organizations on an equal footing with other states.[5]
The basic principles of sovereign authority are territorial integrity, Border inviolability, Supremacy of the state and a sovereign is the supreme law making authority within the jurisdiction.
| The sovereign, having no other force than the legislative power, acts only through the laws; and the laws being nothing but authentic acts of the general will, the sovereign can act only when the people are assembled. The people assembled, it will be said: what a chimera! It is a chimera to-day; but it was not so two thousand years ago.
The limits of the possible in moral things are less narrow than we think; it is our weaknesses, our vices, our prejudices, that contract them. Sordid souls do not believe in great men; vile slaves smile with a mocking air at the word liberty. The last census in Rome showed that there were 400,000 citizens bearing arms, and the last enumeration of the Empire showed more than 4,000,000 citizens, without reckoning subjects, foreigners, women, children, and slaves. What a difficulty, we might suppose, there would be in assembling frequently the enormous population of the capital and its environs. Yet few weeks passed without the Roman people being assembled, even several times. Not only did they exercise the rights of sovereignty, but a part of the functions of government. They discussed certain affairs and judged certain causes, and in the public assembly the whole people were almost as often magistrates as citizens.[6] We might insist that the ethical reflection of natural law should inform the proper exercise of sovereign authority, but we err in articulating the nature of the relationship between politico-legal sovereignty and natural law if we assume that they are type of normative supremacy similar in kind, or if we hastily assume that sovereign authority actually resides within the ethical principles themselves. A moments inattention here produces more confusion. We can rapidly and plausibly be seduced in to holding the view that the sovereign rules with the tactical consent of the people or the community but with in the bounds of property laid down by the higher authority to be found in the basic principles of natural law. Constitutional bodies can not , without some equivocation, claim to limit or control a sovereign without themselves taking on the attribute of sovereignty. This does not preclude constitutional design of a common wealth incorporated under civil law. But this design is internal to the system of sovereign authority, constitutionally is public law interpreted by the sovereign appointed judges charged with the task of articulating the authentic will of the sovereign. A constitution can not, as Kant pointed out and as we shall proceed to discuss a public law that permits the sovereign overridden.[7] The constitutional principle is that the law is the authentic will of the sovereign and the judicial task is to determine what this is. |
A sovereign state imposes law in a quite different way. It does not need anything like unanimous or general agreement–among its own citizens–before it proclaims its own law. And for most purposes, the state is the enforcer, not the citizens…. A sovereign has the right to make and enforce law and the citizens are obliged to obey, even if they dislike the law and even if they do not approve the way the law is implemented or enforced against others.
If international law could be enforced on dissenters, in the manner of domestic law, then the dissenting states would no longer be sovereign. Not many states (or their peoples) would consent to yield up their independence in this way to outside powers.
Conclusion
Sovereign authority is the power of a sovereign and independent country. The laws are made for peace and comfort life structure of human being. The people are living with in a state. So the laws are made for the welfare and improvement of the country. Laws are equal for everyone and no one is out of this law. If there is any law without sovereign authority that time no one is bound to follow this law because without sovereign authority no one can impose any punishment to anyone and only a sovereign authority can write this law. Only a sovereign authority can preserve this law and impose this law. Suppose two shipwrecked men thrown upon a desert island, far removed from all human society, far removed from all its agencies and instrumentalities for the prevention and punishment of crime, and one in wantonness kills the other, is the act any less a crime, because it may never be discovered, because it may never be reached by the avenging arm of justice, because the social compact has never been in force in that remote region of the earth. So law has a sovereign authority and there can not be a law without sovereign authority.
Bibliography
A. http://www.historyoflaw.info/
B. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history
C. http://www.lawfulpath.com/ref/laworigin
D. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal
E. http://www.lawteacher.net/history-of-law.php
F. http://benefitof.net/benefits-of-laws/
G. http://www.law-essays-uk.com/resources/sample-essays/international-law/command-of-the-sovereign
H. http://dictionary.reference
I. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/sovereign-authority
J. http://dictionary.reference/sovereign
K. http://oll.libertyfund.org
M. http://modules/other_material/law_and_morality
[1] See Austin.J :”Province of Jurisprudence Determined”
[2] Théodoridés. “law”. Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt.
[3] See sovereignty in Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy Saturday , May 31 ,2003
[4] Biersteker, T. J. and C. Weber, Eds. (1996). State sovereignty as social construct. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[5] See Brahm.E (2004 ) soveriginity
[6] CHAPTER XII.: How the Sovereign Authority is Maintained. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ideal Empires and Republics. Rousseau’s Social Contract, More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Campanella’s City of the Sun [1901]
[7] Kant, Immanuel The Metaphysics of morals mary Gregor, (ed.) (Cambridge University press, 1996)