By T.R.S. Allan
In The Sovereignty of Law Trevor Allan offers an obtainable creation to his influential universal legislation constitutional conception - an account of the unwritten structure as a fancy articulation of felony and ethical rules. The British structure is conceived as a coherent set of primary ideas of the guideline of legislations, legislative supremacy, and separation of powers. those rules mix to supply an overarching team spirit of legality, legitimacy, and democracy, reconciling political authority with person freedom.
Drawing at the paintings of Lon Fuller and Ronald Dworkin, Allan emphasizes the normative personality of criminal interpretation - figuring out the consequences of statute and precedent by way of connection with ethical beliefs of legality and liberty. Allan denies that constitutional legislation might be lowered to empirical proof approximately legislative or judicial behavior or opinion. there's no 'rule of popularity' from the lawyer's interpretative standpoint - just a ethical concept of the character and boundaries of political authority, which legal professionals needs to build for you to make experience of felony and constitutional perform. a real republicanism, maintaining person independence, calls for the safeguards afforded by means of judicial assessment, which needs to make sure that governmental motion is in line with the rule of thumb of legislation; and the guideline of legislation encompasses now not simply the formal equality of all sooner than the legislation, as enacted or declared, yet a extra basic suggestion of equivalent citizenship. Allan's interpretative method is utilized to quite a lot of modern problems with public legislations; his reaction to critics and commentators seeks to deepen the argument via exploring the theoretical grounds of those present debates and controversies.
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Additional resources for The Sovereignty of Law: Freedom, Constitution and Common Law
Sample text
38 The ProLife Alliance case illustrates the way in which conceptions of language, authority, and law fit together as interlocking elements of rival theories of public law. Commitments to unqualified parliamentary supremacy, making even the most basic precepts of law subject to fluctuating expressions of majority will, invoke rather crude distinctions between ‘interpretation’ and ‘amendment’. Even the smallest departures from literal meaning will undermine judicial subservience to Parliament by acknowledging the scope for creative adaptation.
It is the principal function of Parliament to give greater precision to the moral duties of cooperation that citizens owe each other; and legislation enacted in good faith for the furtherance of the public good should be treated respectfully, at least when any limitations of individual right are capable of reasonable justification. And it is normally right to accept judicial decisions as finally determining the legality and correct meaning of statutory provisions, when these matters are subject to dispute.
It is understood that Parliament is responsible for furthering justice and promoting the common good, whether by enacting legislation to correct abuses, deterring harmful conduct, or by calling the executive Government to account for its stewardship of the public finances and general conduct of policy. Within all reasonable bounds—within the limits of reasonable disagreement— Acts of Parliament should elicit the cooperation of both public official and private citizen. In a liberal democracy that enshrines the idea of equal citizenship—that everyone is of equal intrinsic worth, regardless of racial or ethnic origin or colour or class or wealth or talent or religion—there are likely to be few wholly unreasonable statutes (or, more strictly, purported statutes) that violate that fundamental precept.