A.V. Dicey and the Common Law Constitutional Tradition
A Legal Turn of Mind

Offers a distinctive account of the rule of law and legislative sovereignty within the work of Albert Venn Dicey.

Mark D. Walters (Author)

9781107028470, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 November 2020

350 pages, 2 b/w illus.
24 x 16 x 3.5 cm, 1.3 kg

'The book is of immense importance for anyone with an interest in the Common Law or jurisprudence, especially within a United Kingdom context.' Javier García Oliva, Law and Justice

In the common law world, Albert Venn Dicey (1835–1922) is known as the high priest of orthodox constitutional theory, as an ideological and nationalistic positivist. In his analytical coldness, his celebration of sovereign power, and his incessant drive to organize and codify legal rules separate from moral values or political realities, Dicey is an uncanny figure. This book challenges this received view of Dicey. Through a re-examination of his life and his 1885 book Law of the Constitution, the high priest Dicey is defrocked and a more human Dicey steps forward to offer alternative ways of reading his canonical text, who struggled to appreciate law as a form of reasoned discourse that integrates values of legality and authority through methods of ordinary legal interpretation. The result is a unique common law constitutional discourse through which assertions of sovereign power are conditioned by moral aspirations associated with the rule of law.

1. Introduction
2. The biggest legal mind we have
3. Young Dicey in Oxford
4. Dicey the common lawyer
5. Dicey and the art and science of law
6. Lectures introductory to the law of the constitution
7. Dicey's legal constitution
8. The law of parliamentary sovereignty
9. The supremacy of ordinary law
10. Sovereignty and the spirit of legality
11. Dicey's administrative law blind spot
12. Towards a discursive legalism
13 The constitution in the common law tradition
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Legal history [LAZ], Common law [LAFC], Jurisprudence & philosophy of law [LAB], Political science & theory [JPA]