Austin completes his account of positive law in Lecture VI by analyzing the concept of a sovereign. He goes on to discuss a variety of related topics (this “lecture” is almost as long as the first five combined), but the heart of his account can be found in the first selection (pp. 219-226).

The remainder of the handout is drawn from Austin’s discussion of forms of government. In addition to the first couple of paragraphs of this part of lecture VI (the second selection, pp. 237f), I’ve included two selections where he addresses cases in which the application of his ideas sovereignty are not obvious: representative democracy (e.g., the British parliament, pp. 243-248) and the American federal system (pp. 257-261). (At the end of the first of these discussions, he makes a reference to an “extraordinary legislature” in the state of New York that might be puzzling; he may have in mind a constitutional convention held in 1821 that led to a substantial revision in the form of the state government.)

So you should focus on the first selection, and most of our discussion will concern it. But the issues of representative government and American governmental structures will naturally arise in our discussion, so you should look at what Austin has to say about them, too. The material on international law at the end of the first selection is mainly for future reference: we’ll discuss international law in the last two weeks of the course, and Austin’s brief comments constitute a succinct presentation of one of the standard positions.