872
Opinion of Souter, J.
Security Entrapment: " '[S]overeign power . . . governs all contracts subject to the sovereign's jurisdiction, and will remain intact unless surrendered in unmistakable terms.' " 477 U. S., at 52 (quoting Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe, 455 U. S. 130, 148 (1982)). This doctrine marks the point of intersection between two fundamental constitutional concepts, the one traceable to the theory of parliamentary sovereignty made familiar by Blackstone, the other to the theory that legislative power may be limited, which became familiar to Americans through their experience under the colonial charters, see G. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, pp. 268-271 (1969).
In his Commentaries, Blackstone stated the centuries-old concept that one legislature may not bind the legislative authority of its successors:
"Acts of parliament derogatory from the power of subsequent parliaments bind not. . . . Because the legislature, being in truth the sovereign power, is always of equal, always of absolute authority: it acknowledges no superior upon earth, which the prior legislature must have been, if it's [sic] ordinances could bind the present parliament." 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 90 (1765).18
In England, of course, Parliament was historically supreme in the sense that no "higher law" limited the scope of legislative action or provided mechanisms for placing legally enforceable limits upon it in specific instances; the power of American legislative bodies, by contrast, is subject to the overriding dictates of the Constitution and the obligations that it authorizes. See Eule, Temporal Limits on the Legislative Mandate: Entrenchment and Retroactivity, 1987 Am.
18 See also H. Hart, The Concept of Law 145 (1961) (recognizing that Parliament is "sovereign, in the sense that it is free, at every moment of its existence as a continuing body, not only from legal limitations imposed ab extra, but also from its own prior legislation").
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