The English Historical Constitution:

The fundamental legal and institutional changes of recent decades have brought the English constitution into question. Accompanying issues have been the extent to which its traditional character and main features have been changed, lost their former appeal or retained their distinctness in the European Union. These issues are not readily addressed in everyday thinking about a constitution simply conceived as unwritten or in constitutional accounts preoccupied with analysis, politics or transcendent norms. The English Historical Constitution addresses these issues by developing a historical constitutional approach and thus elaborating on continuity and change in the constitution's main doctrines and institutions. From an English legal perspective, it offers a complement or corrective to analytical, political and normative approaches by reforming an old conception of the historical constitution and its history, partly obscured and long neglected through the modern analytical preoccupation with its law as an abstract scheme of rules, principles and practices.

John Allison is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Queens' College

Table of Cases	p. vii
Preface	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
A historical constitutional approach	p. 7
Dicey's analytical approach	p. 7
A descriptive analytical legacy	p. 9
Dicey's methodological predicament	p. 11
The historical constitution	p. 15
Towards a methodological reformation	p. 24
Aims and method	p. 26
The liberal normativist alternative	p. 29
The political constitution	p. 33
Complementary and competing points of view	p. 39
The historical constitution's relevance	p. 41
The Crown: evolution through institutional change and conservation	p. 46
The medieval European matrix	p. 47
The Crown as a corporation sole	p. 50
English constitutional adaptation	p. 54
Later European influences: Maitland and modernisation	p. 58
The impact of Community law	p. 64
Domestic English resources	p. 67
English peculiarities and European influences	p. 69
Sources of rationality and legitimacy	p. 70
The separation of powers as a customary practice	p. 74
The French standard	p. 76
Early English advocacy	p. 78
Historic legislation on judicial power and judicial tenure	p. 80
Doctrinal scepticism	p. 83
Doctrinal inconsistency	p. 86
Evolving judicial practice	p. 87
The recent constitutional reforms	p. 94
The English paradox	p. 100
Parliamentary sovereignty and the European Community: the economy of the common law	p. 103
Dicey's orthodoxy	p. 105
Rules of manner and form	p. 107
Judicial revolution	p. 110
Principles of legal and political morality	p. 119
The economy of the common law	p. 123
Resilience through change and continuity	p. 126
The brief rule of a controlling common law	p. 128
Coke's common law of reason	p. 131
Contrasting interpretations	p. 132
Rex...sub Deo et lege	p. 141
The European and the English in reason and rhetoric	p. 143
A controlling common law and a transcendent Parliament	p. 148
The eclipse of Coke's controlling common law	p. 150
The historical constitutional significance of Coke's common law	p. 156
Dicey's progressive and reactionary rule of law	p. 157
The formality of Dicey's three meanings	p. 158
The sway of a sovereign Parliament	p. 161
A constitutional conundrum	p. 164
Progressive whig history	p. 165
English reactions and Continental comparisons	p. 172
Dicey's appeal	p. 184
Beyond Dicey	p. 186
Dicey's continuing influence	p. 188
A substantive rule of law	p. 191
Bi-polar sovereignty	p. 216
The Human Rights Act 1998	p. 221
Formation of doctrine in the historical constitution	p. 234
Conclusions and implications	p. 237
Bibliography	p. 245
Index	p. 264
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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The English Historical Constitution: Continuity, Change and European Effects

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Table of Contents

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