 If the sovereign’s decision on the exception is not subject to any material legal constraint, the power to decide on the state of exception is tantamount to the power to decide what should count as a state of exception (PT 13; Norris 2007). A sovereign’s view on this issue, however, must be responsive to prevailing social attitudes. If it were not, a sovereign could hardly possess the factual capability to suspend the law and to act successfully against the perceived emergency. To do so, his decision will need to be supported by a sufficiently large and powerful constituency. Nevertheless, the need for sovereign decision will be greatest in a society torn by serious ideological or social conflict. And if there is no unanimity among social groups as to what situation to perceive as normal or exceptional, the sovereign decision will inevitably have to side with one group’s conception of normality against that of another. The sovereign creation of a condition of normality, in other words, constitutes a community’s political identity and it is likely to do so through the forcible suppression of those whose conception of normality differs from the sovereign’s (D 132–47). The question of the legitimacy of law thus turns on the question of the legitimacy of an identity-constituting sovereign exercise of foundational violence.