The State by Philip Pettit;

Author:Philip Pettit;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Assessing the Argument

This argument against the idea that a non-sovereign agent might exercise power against the sovereign, and do so as a constitutional right, may look unassailable. Let every state be assumed to have a sovereign in control, and let every sovereign be assumed to have supreme domestic power. It will then follow that the constitution or mode of organization that establishes the sovereign cannot at the same time give any other agents among the people—any individual or corporate agents—the right to exercise power over the sovereign.

There are two points to make in response to the argument, however. The first is that no matter what sort of sovereign a constitution establishes, it is bound to give people a by-product right—a spandrel right, as we call it—to civil disobedience and a right to forcibly assert the complaints and demands that such disobedience will communicate. The second point is that even putting aside civil disobedience, the argument will have little practical import—it will do little to rule out the complaints and demands that citizens may make as subjects—when the sovereign assumes a polycentric form and the state is decentralized.

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