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Judges in Politics: England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

J. A. G. Griffith
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Extract

HER MAJESTY'S JUDGES ARE BY NATURE CONSERVATIVE BECAUSE their function is to apply existing law, to uphold a system not to subvert it. But they are not by nature reactionary, do not have any necessary opposition to new ideas, must indeed seek to fit political novelties expressed in statutory terms into the existing order. But, by their background and more importantly by their training, they are cautious, have seen it before, and in interpreting Acts of Parliament still work on the basis of certain assumptions which are also widely shared by those in the street below their windows, along the embankment at Westminster, and by the man in the passing Clapham omnibus. These assumptions are that Parliament does not intend to enact anydung so radical as to upset the constitution, or to deprive private persons of life, liberty or property by inadvertence but only by express words, and that Parliament generally enacts within what the judges regard as the fundamental political and economic structure of contemporary Anglo-Saxon society.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1968 , pp. 485 - 498
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1968

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References

1 See W. I. Jennings: Courts and Administrative Law – the experience of English Housing Legislation (49 Harv. L.R. (1936), 426). See also, generally, chapter by Robson, W. A. in Lord Campion (ed.), British Government since 1918.Google Scholar

2 [1925] A.C. 578. And see Keith-Lucas, B., ‘Poplarisrn’ in [1962] Public Law 52.Google Scholar

3 At pp. 594, 595.

4 Cmd. 4060.

5 [1929] 1 K.B. 619.

6 At p. 624.

7 [1930] 2 K.B. 98; [1931] A.C. 494.

8 At p. 145.

9 At p. 513.

10 At p. 537.

11 [1932] 2 K.B. 621.

12 At p. 633.

13 [1935] 1 K.B. 249.

14 At pp. 279–80.

15 237 H. C. Deb. 5s. col. 1807.

16 At col. 1814.

17 R. v. Postmaster-General [1928] 1 K.B. 291.

18 R. v. Electricity Commissioners [1924] 1 K.B. 171.

19 R. v. L.C.C. [1931] 2 K.B. 215.

20 [1942] A.C. 206.

21 E.g. Point of Ayr v. Collieries Ltd. v. Lloyd George [1943] 2 All E.R. 546; Carlton v. Commissioners of Works [1943] 2 All E.R. 560; Robinson v. Minister of Town and Country Planning [1947] K.B. 702; Earl Fitz William’s Wentworth Estates Co. v. Minister of Housing and Local Government [1952] A.C. 362.

22 (1850) 5 Ex. 378.

23 [1941] A.C. 378, 393.

24 Franklin, v. Minister of Town and Country Planning [1948] A.C. 87.Google Scholar

25 [1948] 1 K.B. 223.

26 At pp. 230–1.

27 [1944] K.B. 644.

28 [1951] A.C. 66.

29 [1951] 1 K.B. 711.

30 [1952] 2 K.B. 413.

31 [1953] 2 Q.B. 18.

32 At p. 41.

33 [1956] A.C. 736.

34 See above.

35 [1960] 3 W.L.R. 866.

36 See, for example, Griffith, J. A. G., ‘The Council and the Chalkpit’ in 39 Public Administration 369.Google Scholar