Specific Case of the Rate law
According to collision theory, for a chemical reaction to occur, the reacting molecules must collide with each other.  

For a bimolecular reaction (as given by you), collision occurs in the single step and thus becomes the rate determining step, as there are no other steps involved.  

If you consider reactions like bromide ions reacting with bromate ions in the presence of acid, it involves 12 reacting particles. If all the 12 reacting particles collide simultaneously you can write rate law expression considering it to be elementary, but those events are extremely rare. In reality such reactions are found to be complex i.e reactions which take place through a sequence of two or more consecutive steps. Here, there are many steps involved, and one should consider slowest step to write rate law expression. But, why? That will become another SE question. In case of reactions taking place in single step, as there are no other steps left to compare with, whether it is slower or not, so you need to consider  the theoritical equation.  

One more thing to be noted is that elementary reactions are associated with single transition state and not single activated complex. For more info read this page: Activated complex