that order and that law which seems to pervade and govern the whole
physical world and the universe. Indeed, there are judicial dicta to the effect
that God Himself considered himself bound by those elementary principles of
justice whose love was planted in man by him. In Cooper v. Wandsworth
Board of Works. (1863) 14 C. B. (N. S.) 180 Byles, J. observed:
"The laws of God and man both give the party an opportunity to make his
defence, if"he has any. I remember to have heard it observed by a very
learned man, upon such an occasion, that even God himself did not pass
sentence upon adam before he was called upon to make his defence. 'Adam'
(says God), 'where art thou? Hast thou not eaten of the tree whereof I
commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat'? And the same question was
put to Eve also".
567. It is clear that no simple theory of sovereignty fits the complex facts
of modern life. Every theory of today, ultimately, rests on concepts more
refined that the physical or spiritual might of some ruler, in whom executive,
legislative, and judicial powers coalesce to take away all legal distinctions
between them. Even if that was ever the concept of sovereignty anywhere, it
was certainly not that of our Constitution makers and it is not ours today.
Even Willoughby, dealing with constitutionalism (Willoughby on "Nature of
the State" 1928, at p. 302) says: "the value of Constitutional government is
not that places sovereignty in the hands of the people, but that it prescribes
definite ways in which this sovereign power shall be exercised by the State".
Hence, he too admits that the Constitution does place some limitation on
exercise of sovereign power. That seems to me to be the essence of a
Constitution and the rationale of its existence.
568. Still another American writer, Orfield, in the course of his discussion
(see: "The Amending of the Federal Constitution" by Lester B. Orfield 1971),
of a number of concepts of sovereignty, seems sometimes to almost consider
Article 5 of the American constitution, containing the constituent power and
its procedure, to be sovereign. He concludes his discussion on the subject as
follows (at p. 166) :
"Each part of the amending body is subject to law, and may be altered or
abolished. The amending body itself may be altered through the amending
process, and limitations on the future amending capacity may be imposed.
The amending body is an artificial sovereign deriving its being from a law in
the form of Article Five. The amending groups hold office for but a short time
and may be supplanted by others in the elections in which an increasingly
larger electorate participates. The theory of sovereignty, moreover,
presupposes the continued orderly existence of the government. In case of a
revolution the commands of the sovereign would be disregarded, and
authority could no longer be ascribed to the amending body either in fact or
in law. The moral, religious, physical, and other factual limitations on the
supposed sovereign are so important that it may perhaps be correct to say
that they are also legal limitations, as there comes a time when law and fact
shade into one another. Finally, when it is remembered that through out all
history, American as well as European, there never has been a consensus as
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