According to Austin, "Law is the command of sovereign that is backed by sanction." Discuss.

John Austin, a noted English legal theorist is known for the Command Theory of law. Austin differentiated between 'Laws properly so called' and 'laws improperly so called' and said that laws properly so called are general commands but not all of it is given by men for men. A specie 'Laws properly so called' are given by political superiors to political inferiors. According to John Austin, "Law is the aggregate of rules set by man as politically superior, or sovereign, to men as political subject." In other words, law is the "command of the sovereign". It obliges a certain course of conduct or imposes a duty and is backed by a sanction (punishment). Thus, law has three main features: It is a command. It is given by a sovereign authority. It has a sanction behind it. The conceptions of command and sovereign are explained hereunder: Command It is an expression of wish or desire of an intelligent person, directing another person to do or to forbear from doing some act, and the violation of this wish will be followed by evil consequences on the person so directed. Command requires the presence of two parties- the commander (political superior) and the commanded (political inferior). Sovereign In Austin's theory, sovereign is politically superior. He has defined sovereign as an authority that receives habitual obedience from the people but itself does not obey some other authority habitually. According to him, the sovereign is the source of all laws. Sanction It is the evil consequence that follows on the violation of a command. To identify a law, the magnitude of the sanction is not relevant but the absence of sanction disentitles an expression of the sovereign from being a law in Austinian sense. Sanction should not also be confused with a reward that might be on offer if a given conduct is followed or refrained from. Reward confers a positive right whereas a sanction is a negative consequence.