question whether the power to amend is co-extensive with the constituent
power of the people to frame a constitution. In Bharati's case 1973 (Supp SCR
1 at p. 794 = (AIR 1973 SC 1461 at p. 1926) I said:
“............ under the Indian Constitution the original sovereign–the people
created, by the amending clause of the Constitution, a lesser sovereign,
almost co-extensive in power with itself. This sovereign the one established
by the revolutionary act of the full or complete sovereign has been called by
Max Radin the “pro-sovereign”, the holder of the amending power under the
Constitution.”
281. I fully appreciate that 'sovereign',- if conceived of as an omnipotent
being, has no existence in the real world. Several thoughtful writers have
deprecated the use of the expression in legal discussion as it has theological
and religious overtones. Nevertheless, as the practice has become inveterate
it will only create confusion if any departure is made in this case from the
practice. If it is made clear that sovereign is not a mortal God' and can
express himself or itself only in the manner and form prescribed by law and
can be sovereign only when he or it acts in a certain way also prescribed by
law, then perhaps the use of the expression will have no harmful
consequence.
282. “Legal sovereignty' is a capacity 'to determine the actions of persons
in certain intended ways by means of a law... where the actions of those who
exercise the authority, in those respects in which they do exercise it, are not
subject to any exercise by other persons of the kind of authority which they
are exercising.”*
283. The point to be kept in mind is that the amending body which
exercises the constituent power of the legal sovereign though limited by
virtue of the decision in Bharati's case, (AIR 1973 SC 1461) can express itself
only by making laws.
284. The distinction between constitutional law and ordinary law in a
rigid constitution like ours is that the validity of the constitutional law
cannot be challenged whereas that of ordinary law can be challenged on the
touchstone of constitution. But constitutional law is as much law as ordinary
law. A Constitution cannot consist of a string of isolated dooms. A judgment
or sentence which is the result of the exercise of judicial power or of despotic
discretion is not a law as it has not got the generality which is an essential
characteristic of law. A despotic decision without ascertaining the facts of a
case and applying the law to them, though dressed in the garb of law, is like a
bill of attainder. It is a legislative judgment.
285. According to Blackstone, a law and a particular command are
distinguished in the following manner: a law obliges generally the members
of a given community or a law obliges generally persons of a given class. A
particular command obliges a single person or persons, whom it determines
individually. Most of the laws established by political superiors are therefore,
general in a twofold manner: as enjoining or forbidding generally acts of
kinds or sorts; and as binding the whole community or at least whole classes
of its members. He then said: See Blackstone: Commentaries Vol. 1, p. 44.
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