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Some Questions for the United Kingdom’s Republican Constitution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Andrew Geddis
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Extract

This book provides an important addition to the debate about the nature and normative basis for the United Kingdom's constitutional ordering. It combines a strong argument against moves to adopt forms of "legal constitutionalism" with a defence of the country's existing "political constitution", one sourced in the ideals of republican government. This critical review explores the structure of Tomkins' claims, and raises three questions about how they might apply to certain aspects of the United Kingdom's constitutional order: the place of a republican United Kingdom in an increasingly integrated Europe; the place of the courts in a republican constitutional order; and the role of political parties in a republican parliament.

Type
Critical Notices
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 177 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2006

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References

My thanks to James Allan, Stuart Anderson, Caroline Morris and Adam Tomkins for comments on this review.

* (Oxford, Hart, 2005) xi + 141, pb, £10.00/US$20.00.

1. Loughlin, Martin, “Constitutional Theory: A 25th Anniversary Essay” (2005) 25 Oxford J. Leg. Stud. 183 at 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Tomkins, Adam, Our Republican Constitution (Oxford: Hart, 2005) at 39.Google Scholar See also infra note 14 and accompanying text.

3. See the words of Mr. Podsnap, in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend: “We Englishmen are Very Proud of our Constitution, Sir. It Was Bestowed Upon Us By Providence. No Other Country is so Favoured as This Country.” Quoted ibid. at 6.

4. Griffith, J.A.G., “The Political Constitution” (1979) 42 Mod. L. Rev. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 3.

6. Ibid. at 2. I note in passing that New Zealand continues to use a “pure” version of this form of government, contra Tomkins’ assertion that “there is nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world”; ibid. at 1.

7. Ibid. at 3.

8. See also Loughlin, M., “Constitutional Law: The Third Order of the Political” in Bamforth, Nicholas & Leyland, Peter, eds., Public Law in a Multi-Layered Constitution (Oxford: Hart, 2003) at 46–49 Google Scholar (using the term “constitutional legalism”). The main sources of the “legal constitutionalism” model identified in Tomkins’ account are Allan, T.R.S., Law, Liberty and Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Allan, T.R.S., Constitutional Justice: a liberal theory of the rule of law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Laws, Sir J., “Law and Democracy” [1995] P. L. 72 Google Scholar; Laws, Sir J., “The Constitution: Morals and Rights’ [1996] P. L. 622 Google Scholar; Laws, Sir John, “The Limitations of Human Rights’ [1998] P. L. 254 Google Scholar; Jowell, Geoffrey, “Of Vires and Vacuums: The Constitutional Context of Judicial Review” [1999] P. L. 448 Google Scholar; Jowell, J., “Beyond the Rule of Law: Towards Constitutional Judicial Review” [2000] P. L. 671 Google Scholar; Oliver, Dawn, “Underlying Values of Public and Private Law” in Taggart, Michael., ed., The Province of Administrative Law (Oxford: Hart, 1997) 225.Google Scholar Tomkins fingers as possible fellow-travellers Craig, P., “Competing Models of Judicial Review” [1999] P. L. 428 Google Scholar; Craig, P., “Constitutional Foundations, the Rule of Law and Supremacy” [2003] P. L. 92 Google Scholar; Sedley, Sir S. “Human Rights: a Twenty-First Century Agenda” [1995] P. L. 386. 9. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 9 Google Scholar.

10. Ibid. at 11.

11. See Harlow, Carol & Rawlings, Richard, Law and Administration, 2nd ed. (London: Butterworths, 1997) at 90 Google Scholar (identifying an “amber light theory” of public law); Loughlin, Martin, Public Law and Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) at ch. 9Google Scholar (identifying a “liberal normativist” position).

12. See Tomkins, supra note 2 at 25-30. For similar critiques see Griffiths, supra note 4; Waldron, Jeremy, “A Right-Based Critique of Constitutional Rights” (1993) 13 Oxford J. Leg. Stud. 18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allan, James, A Sceptical Theory of Morality and Law (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tushnet, Mark, Taking the Constitution Away From the Courts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Loughlin, M., Sword and Scales: An Examination of the Relationship between Law and Politics (Oxford: Hart, 2000)Google Scholar; Ekins, R., “Judicial Supremacy and the Rule of Law” (2003) 119 Law Q. Rev. 127 Google Scholar; Kramer, Larry, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

13. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 40.

14. The terms, along with the particular theorists to whom the terms are attached, are adopted wholesale from Loughlin, supra note 11.

15. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 40.

16. See also Tomkins, A., Public Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003) at 5 Google Scholar (“Constitutions are not value-neutral legal documents, dry as dust and dull as ditchwater: they are living representations of the politics which made them and which consume them.”).

17. Pettit, Philip, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).Google Scholar

18. Skinner, Quentin, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics, Vol. II: Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

19. See Tomkins, supra note 2 at 40.

20. Ibid. at 57.

21. Ibid. at 63.

22. Ibid. at 64-65.

23. Ibid at 69. The example cited is Craig, Paul, “Prerogative, Precedent and Power” in Forsyth, Christopher & Hare, Ivan, eds., The Golden Metwand and the Crooked Cord (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).Google Scholar

24. (1607) 12 Co. Rep. 63; 77 ER 1342.

25. (1611) 12 Co. Rep. 74; 77 ER 1352.

26. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 133.

27. Ibid. at 135.

28. Ibid. at 137.

29. Ibid at 140.

30. See also Tomkins, supra note 16 at 131-69; Tomkins, “What is Parliament For?” in N. Bamforth & P. Leyland, supra note 8 at 53.

31. See sources cited supra note 12.

32. As the author himself appears to acknowledge, see Tomkins, supra note 2 above at 140.

33. Ibid. at 38-40.

34. Human Rights Act 1998 (UK), s. 6(1) (“It is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention right.”)

35. Ibid. at s. 3(1).

36. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 7.

37. Ibid. at 20-21.

38. Tomkins, supra note 16 at 108. Tomkins is discussing the impact of the House of Lords decision in R v. Secretary of State for Transport, ex parte Factortame (No. 2) [1991] 1 AC 603.

39. For a graphic illustration of the what this price may be, see Thoburn v. Sunderland City Council [2003] QB 151.

40. See Tomkins, supra note 2 above at 5-6. See also Tomkins, A., “Responsibility and Resignation in the European Commission” (1999) 62 Mod. L. Rev. 744 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tomkins, A., “The Draft Constitution of the European Union” [2003] P. L. 240.Google Scholar

41. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 1. But also see supra note 6.

42. M. Taggart, “Reinventing Administrative Law” in N. Bamforth & P. Leyland, eds., supra note 8 at 324.

43. Associated Provincial Picture Houses v. Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223 Google Scholar.

44. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 22.

45. Ibid. at 14 (quoting Atkin, Lord in Liversidge v. Anderson [1942] AC 206 at 242)Google Scholar.

46. Ibid. at 120.

47. See supra note 27.

48. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 134.

49. Ibid. at 138.

50. Bogdanor, Vernon, “Introduction” in Bogdanor, V., ed., The British Constitution in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) at 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51. See, e.g., Madison, James, “The Federalist No. 10” in Rossiter, Clinton, ed., The Federalist Papers (New York: New American Library, 1961 [1788]) at 79–84.Google Scholar

52. Tomkins, supra note 2 at 138.

53. Ibid.

54. The closest example may be the US Senate, but even this body falls short of the ideal that Tomkins is proposing.

55. See Cowley, Philip ‘“Crossing the floor”: Representative Theory and Practice in Britain’ [1996] P. L. 214 at 219-23.Google Scholar

56. Geddis, Andrew & Morris, Caroline, ‘“All is Changed, Changed Utterly”?—The Causes and Consequences of New Zealand’s Adoption of MMP’ (2004) 32 Fed. L. Rev. 451 at 470.Google Scholar