Sovereignty differs from domination by making rather than obeying principles

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

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes a sharp distinction between ‘domination’ (constrained rule, as in Islamic empires under sharia) and ‘sovereignty’ (unbounded will that creates its own principles) — a term precisely defined to serve the book’s larger argument.
• XREF: Connects to the op-ed on sacrifice and to general political-theory readings on sovereignty vs. governmentality; also resonates with discussions of sharia as a constraint on rulers. — connects to: The liberal subject of right derives from state sovereignty, not natural drives. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 169; Assembly versus convention encodes radically different sovereignty claims — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 807