It also provides the ruler both with a super-sensible right to command as well as provide him with the supreme moral and physical power to command and enforce his will (which incidentally is the specific factor that ultimately gives force to the law). Furthermore, it provides the legal order with an ideological connection to the ruler’s divine personality.396 Notwithstanding the abovementioned powers, legal theory claims that the ruler is still bound by the rules of the constitution.397 The passing of time and the accompanying intellectual progress of society have suppressed the idea of the supernatural origin of these ideas, abandoning them in favor of other less primitive ideas. During the 19th and 20th centuries the power of the political sovereign and the state were perceived as being organic super-sensible unions of individuals that possessed the power and right to obligate themselves and their subjects through commands and prohibitions, thereby assuming the right to exercise legitimate coercion over the disobedient. Since this union of individuals is ideal to its nature, the theory’s historical origin in natural law is obvious, especially if one considers that the idea of the political sovereign’s near divine powers to bind and obligate the citizens constitutes the theoretical substratum to the theory.398 The only difference with respect to earlier theories is that the supernatural character of the theory has been given a realistic and less manifestly supernatural form, which expresses itself in the fact that the modern construction of the commanding legal order refrains fromovert references to themystical.However, the fact still remains - modern legal theory transfers the power of legislation from the hands of the divine ruler to the reificated legal order itself. From a scientific point of view, nothing has been gained, as the theory simultaneously explains the a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 499 396 Hägerström,“Principundersökning,” pp. 215-220; “Fundamental Problems,” pp. 355361. 397 Hägerström,“Principundersökning,” pp. 215-220;“Fundamental Problems,” pp. 355361. 398 Hägerström, “Principundersökning,” p. 219; “Fundamental Problems,” p. 246.
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