The legislative power’s location determines a government’s entire form

Evidence

THE majority having, as has been shewed, upon men’s first uniting into society, the whole power of the community naturally in them, may employ all that power in making laws for the community from time to time, and executing those laws by officers of their own appointing; and then the form of the government is a perfect democracy: or else may put the power of making laws into the hands of a few select men, and their heirs or successors; and then it is an oligarchy: or else into the hands of one man, and then it is a monarchy: if to him and his heirs, it is an hereditary monarchy: if to him only for life, but upon his death the power only of nominating a successor to return to them; an elective monarchy. And so accordingly of these the community may make compounded and mixed forms of government, as they think good. And if the legislative power be at first given by the majority to one or more persons only for their lives, or any limited time, and then the supreme power to revert to them again; when it is so reverted, the community may dispose of it again anew into what hands they please, and so constitute a new form of government: for the form of government depending upon the placing the supreme power, which is the legislative, it being impossible to conceive that an inferior power should prescribe to a superior, or any but the supreme make laws, according as the power of making laws is placed, such is the form of the commonwealth. — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 159

Categorization

• DEFINE: Locke’s taxonomy: democracy, oligarchy, monarchy and their hereditary/elective variants are all defined purely by where the supreme legislative power rests.
• XREF: This is the classification the US Constitution’s ‘government by consent’ structure and its separation-of-powers debates over legislative supremacy draw on. — connects to: Locke’s commonwealth means any independent political community, not a specific regime — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 160; Legislative power cannot be delegated to hands other than the people’s choice — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 174; Legislatures expanded into fields courts once exclusively governed — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 455 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Legislative power cannot be delegated to hands other than the people’s choice #corroborates (0.78) — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 174