Legal Power: The Basic Definition

The concept of legal power (often called legal competence) is important in the law since, with regard to actions having legal effect, the “exercise of legal power” delimits those actions for which manifestation of intention to achieve a legal effect is essential for the effect to ensue. The paper proposes a definition that captures this feature of legal power and marks it off rom “direct effect,” as well as from permissibility and practical ability to achieve the legal effect. This analysis of power is limited to the “immediate” legal power of a physical person characterized by the powerholder achieving a legal result by the power-holder’s own behaviour (not by representatives acting on behalf of the power-holder). It is argued that in the literature on power the concept of legal power is frequently construed in such a way that it becomes either too broad or too narrow.