Relation between political and lega

Relation between political and legal sovereignty. The problem of good government, says Ritchie, is largely the problem of the proper relation between the legal and the ultimate sovereign. In a system of direct democracy legal and political sovereigns practically coincide, because the people are directly concerned in making laws. Their expressed will is not a mere opinion, but a law itself. They also elect and remove their rulers, In an indirect democracy representatives of the people make laws. They constitute the legal sovereign and the people who elect their representatives may roughly he called the political sovereign. Law ought to conform to the wishes of the electorate and the legislators must obey their mandate. If they do not, the electorate and the legislature are not in harmony with one another and disharmony between the two tends to create political friction. Really, legal and political sovereign are not two separate entities. They are two aspects of the sovereignty of the State, though expressed through different channels. When there is friction between the two is highly detrimental to good government. Law must be the manifestation of the will of the people and if the legal sovereign cannot accept the verdict of the political sovereign, the representatives of the people should be re-elected and the legislature reorganised and reconstituted so as to become the mirror of their opinion. Laski has rightly said that “individual is, ultimately the supreme arbiter of his behavior” and "if the State is to be a moral entity, it must be built upon the organised acquiescence of the members. The last word remains with the ultimate sovereign, the electorate. Indeed, in some democratic states there often seems to be, says Laski, “a larger degree of obedience from the sovereign Parliament to its constituents than there is the other way round; a series of by-elections, for instance, produce with amazing rapidity a change in the will and temper of the sovereign. ''