constitutional lawyers such as Ivor Jennings, have said that it is flirtation with political theory which has brought into the juristic fold a term such as 'sovereignty'. On the other hand, political theorists, such as Mc Iver, have balmed, far less justly, jurists like Austin for infecting political theory with legalistic authoritarian notions of sovereignty. Political theorists, in their attempts to understand and rationalize, and sometimes to justify or condemn a system are more concerned with the operations of all those socio-economiccum-political forces which govern society. Law is, for them, one of these forces and reflects them. Lawyers have been compelled to 'Flirt' (if I may employ the term used by Sir Ivor Jennings with sovereignty) only because they have to look for some final authority which determines the validity of the claims they have to deal with. Political theory, faced with the complexities of modern life, finds location of sovereignty as a power concept too elusive and difficult a task to be satisfactorily carried out. Some of them would like to banish the term to the region of purely moral philosophy where it could be reserved for such freedom of thought and will and action as even the most powerful totalitarian State, employing all the techniques based on Prof. Pavlov's theories for purposes of propaganda, cannot take away from the individual. Others find it of use only in International Law to denote that independence of the national State and the freedom which it claims and is entitled to from outside interference. Jurists as well as practical lawyers have to be content with finding an ultimate measuring rod in a fundamental law which could test the validity of exercise of every kind of Governmental power. Their quest for certainty is even more pressing and urgent that of the political theorist. For their purposes, the supremacy of the Constitution, of which a very vital and necessary part is the constituent power, is sufficient. Of course, they have to determine the content of "constituent power" itself in the light of all relevant considerations which, as I have indicated above, may take us outside the ordinary range of Law. Nevertheless, our deviation from the orthodox canons of construction and interpretation, when faced with such a problem, must not be so wide as to rob our method of construction itself of legal propriety or give rise to the suspicion that we have ourselves clearly trespassed into the territory of law making. The lines of demarcation, though difficult to draw sometimes, are, nevertheless, there. 581. I do not think that it is at all helpful to refer to certain authorities of this Court which were, rather surprisingly, relied upon by learned counsel supporting the 39th amendment to discover the nature of the "constituent power" contained in Art. 368. I will content myself by citing a passage from the last of these cases relied upon which mentions the earlier cases of this Court also on the effect of a "Firman", in Tilkayat Shri Govindlalji Maharaj v. The State of Rajasthan, (1964) 1 SCR 561 = (AIR 1963 SC 1638) Gajendragedkar J., speaking for this Court said (at p. 591) (of SCR) = (at p. 1650 of AIR) : "In appreciating the effect of this Firman, it is first necessary to decide whether the Firman is a law or not. It is matter of common knowledge that at the relevant time the Maharana of Udaipur was an absolute monarch in