Professor Leon Duguit’s idea of the stale is entirely different from that of Holland, Gray and Salmond. According to him the state is a body of men dwelling upon a determined territory, of which the stronger impose their wills on the weaker, which power is called sovereignty.
He denies the existence of the stale itself by regarding ii is a fiction, and stales that a state is no personified entity; it has no quasi-divine or transcendental character. It is nothing more than the group of men who, in fact, in a society are materially stronger than the others.
The acts are done by the force of the group or at least the majority of it who satisfy the sense and need for social solidarity and maintenance of justice, as it exists from time to time. Law, according to him, is not a creation of the state, but, on the contrary, arises independently of it and limits and controls the state.
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According to Duguit’s a state, therefore, becomes merely a particular group which does not make positive law, but has its activities as a matter of law regulated by regales do droid emanating from solidarity and sentiment of justice. There is consequently no such thing as the imposition of will by the Slate.
Duguit’s theory bore an interpretation of social phenomena which gained importance in the Third Republic of France. He expressed profound distrust of the irresponsible exercise of authority by the officials who were responsible for a number of interesting experiments in the Third Republic.