A law binds only because sovereign will chose to be bound by it

Evidence

True sovereignty, whose most exemplary, and readily identifiable, manifestation is to be found in the modern state, gives birth to law, which in turn constitutes the expression of sovereign will. This will is the paradigmatic feature in the practice of government, for it is the tool that defines the quality, range, modus operandi, and modus vivendi of the state. Without total command of the law, in principle and in overwhelming practice, a state can never be recognized as a state. Likewise, a state that does not possess the ability or mechanisms necessary for legislating and making exceptions to so-called normative law cannot be deemed a state. The entailment between sovereign will and the capacity and prerogative to legislate and suspend legislation explains why a state must claim ownership of its law in the sense that what it adopts becomes its own law, even when it is suspended, and even if that law was originally “transplanted” from another state. This, as I have stated, is most integral to the concept of sovereignty: deeming a law binding as a practical or formal matter becomes possible precisely because the sovereign will itself decided to be bound by it, not because of any inherent force in the law (or in a principle) that binds. The exception to the law is as legal as the law itself, an exception that defines the very concept of sovereignty on which the state stands. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 197

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the concept of sovereignty as resting on the sovereign’s will to be bound, not on any inherent force of law — and that the exception to law is as legal as the law itself.
• XREF: Connects to Schmitt’s state of exception and Agamben’s sovereign exception; also resonates with the reader’s existing work on law merchant and extralegal contracting — the difference being that here the exception is internal to law rather than outside it. — connects to: The Rule of law opposes both sovereign despotism and the police state — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 916; A sovereign subject is only the effect of an effect. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1759; Legal rules become binding only when supporters hold enforcement power — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 471 (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the exception to law is as legal as the law itself, and that binding force comes only from sovereign will, is a paradigm-shifting reframing of what makes law law — worth sitting with.