Sovereign power makes principles rather than obeying them

Evidence

It is therefore linguistically and substantively more accurate to employ the term “sovereignty.” Linguistically, this is the case because this form of European domination possessed in addition a supreme power that articulates the conception of free will in the manner that domination was exercised and in the quality of that domination. The term “domination” does not articulate the meaning of unbounded will to control and influence someone or something else, nor does it exclude external restraints or higher moral or ethical considerations that define the field of play and its range. Domination can still obtain when ruling a subject population while being restrained by political and even moral principles. Islamic empires and kingdoms are a case in point: they dominated the subject populations, but under the constraints of a “law” that was not, as we saw, of their own making and that constrained them in multiple ways. Sovereignty, however, does not only rule over principles, but makes them, as it goes, at will. Even when it decides to adopt a principle or a set of principles, the decision is the result and, indeed, manifestation of sovereign will. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 193 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Unprecedented power cannot be constrained by law made before it exists — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1637; The Rule of law opposes both sovereign despotism and the police state — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 916; Political rationality enables and legitimates governing instruments rather than serving them. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 220 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Sovereignty differs from domination by making rather than obeying principles #expands (0.95) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 193