Rulers have always found it hard to accept limits on their power. When the French parliament disputed Louis XIV’s edicts in 1655, the king of France and Navarre is said to have responded: “L’état, c’est moi” (“I am the state”). The ensuing age of absolutism in France ended only with the French Revolution in 1789.Like Louis XIV, Elon Musk rejects legal constraints on his power. In defiance of a recent Delaware Chancery Court ruling that voided his $56 billion compensation agreement with Tesla TSLA, -2.18%, M ...