The Sovereignty of Parliament

The Quasi-Entrenchment of Constitutional Statutes

“…The point has been well made by others and we shall not labour it here. 76 Not every common law constitutionalist believes that judges can change the common law. Trevor Allan, for example, adopts a Dworkinian conception of the common law according to which the common law is a set of norms based on the fundamental principles of political morality that are best able to justify the legal system as a whole.…”

“…83 From this second point, it follows that the Supreme Court, and even judges as a whole, cannot unilaterally alter the rule of recognition. 84 They need the cooperation, or at least the acquiescence, of other lawapplying officials. We know, as a result, that the Court in H did not change the ultimate rule of recognition.…”

Procedural Innovation and the Surreptitious Creation of Judicial Supremacy in the United Kingdom

“…That is surely a requirement of democracy itself. 51 We believe this article describes the attempt surreptitiously to exercise such a judicial fiat.…”

Defending and Contesting the Sovereignty of Law: The Public Lawyer as Interpretivist

“…Alternatively, supporters of the orthodoxy might recast Goldsworthy's Hartian defence of parliamentary sovereignty as an interpretative theory. The argument would be something like this: that the values of maintaining constitutional stability and averting constitutional crisis, and the value of enabling people to reflect on whether the law is worthy of obedience, make it the case that the powers of parliament and courts depend on the empirically ascertainable beliefs of most officials. As Allan rightly says, however, it is highly doubtful whether one could ever find the necessary consensus among officials to support such an interpretation (156).…”