Parliamentary Sovereignty Flashcards
‘The Rule of recognition’
Wade: the basis of Parliament’s authority to make law is a political agreement between the monarchy, Parliament and the a courts.
1688 ‘Glorious Revolution’ & Bill of Rights 1689.
Struggle for power between the House of Commons, House of Lords and the Monarchy.
As a result of the glorious revolution - the monarchs prerogative powers were placed beneath statute in hierarchy of constitutional importance.
Dicey and Parliamentary Sovereignty
Positive limb: that Parliament can enact and repeal any Law provided that the ‘rules of recognition have been met’ (Hart’s theory came after Dicey)
* follow that legislative procedure any legislature can become law so long as it is passed by a majority of 1.
Negative limb: the legality of an act cannot be challenged in Court.
-there is no higher form of law than the will of parliament as expressed in the text of an act.
Legal authority for the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty.
Constitution post 1689 did not offer any role for the courts to invoke natural/common law as a source of legal authority having higher constitutional status than Acts of Parliament.
Holt CJ in City of London v Wood (1701) that ‘an act of Parliament can do no wrong though it may do several things that look pretty odd’.
