Essays on Parliamentary Sovereignty

Introduction

Parliamentary sovereignty is one of the most sensitive subjects on the United Kingdom legal and political agendas. Since the monarch of the country was made subordinate under the United Kingdom unwritten constitution, numerous questions regarding the ability of Parliament to adopt the acts of supreme legal force has been regularly contested. In particular, there is a strong division among the UK legal scholars in this regard. While the first group strongly believes that the Parliament of the United Kingdom is not confined by anything and anyone, others are the staunchest advocates of the idea that the Parliament’s powers ...

Introduction

Parliamentary sovereignty is a system of governance, which denotes that Parliament is the supreme legal authority with the sole capacity to make or end any law. The relationship between Parliament and other arms of government go as far as they do not interfere with or overrule legislations passed by Parliament. The concept of supreme Parliament was discussed by the AV Dicey in his 19th-century book “The Law of the Constitution (1885, p. 39-40).” In his view, Dicey believed that Parliament has unlimited power under the English constitution to make or unmake law in whichever way it deem fit and ...

Whether to rely on Dicey’s doctrine is subjective as there are as many reasons against it just like reasons for. It is a mixture of behavior most likely in line to support the view that, “there is no good without harm”. Whatever the Diceys doctrines hold is as much fundamental to the current constitution. It is therefore important to evaluate the strength of this doctrine in regard to the prevailing circumstances.

AV Dicey just like other scholars like Erskine May played an important role in coming up with British general law. In particular Dicey in his book, An ...

1. Overview of Topic This paper aims at discussing the question of the sovereignty of the British Parliamentary system based on the outcome of Jackson v. Attorney General 2005.According the constitutional provisions of the British legislative system there lacks a clear line between the extent of interference between the House of Lords and that of the House of Commons. The ruling of Jackson v. Attorney General 2005 supports this hypothesis based on the structure of arguments presented by the Jury in giving the verdict of this case. This paper intends to use the outcome of this case to determine ...

Introduction

The standard theory of Parliamentary Sovereignty set out by AV Dicey in An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution has often been referred to as the ‘orthodox’ theory of Parliamentary Sovereignty, and taught to generations of law students ever since the 19th Century. Dicey’s proposal was later regarded as the ‘basic principle’ of the British constitution: that a statute is to be taken as being the highest form of law within the British constitutional structure (Loveland, 2006, 23). Therefore, this implied that the British Parliament alone, is the sovereign lawmaker in the country, and no ...