A.V. Dicey and the common law constitutional tradition : a legal turn of mind / Mark D. Walters.

Albert Venn Dicey and the common law constitutional tradition : a legal turn of mind / Mark D. Walters

1st edition

9781107028470 hardback

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2020.

©2020

English

xvii, 460 pages : illustrations, portraits (black and white) ; 24 cm

BIO DICE.a 2020

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. Explores how a leading constitutional scholar, A.V. Dicey, struggled to reconcile two constitutional principles: legislative sovereignty and the rule of law. Explores constitutional values through an examination of their historical development in legal literature Explores the difference between the constitution as extraordinary law and the constitution as ordinary law. - Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Cambridge studies in constitutional law.

General research collection
Biographies