Albert Venn Dicey

Albert Venn Dicey, (born February 4, 1835, near Lutterworth,

Leicestershire, England—died April 7, 1922, Oxford), For this treatise,
which is noted for its application of legal positivism to the study of
British constitutional law, he drew on his knowledge of
constitutionalism in the United States as well as in Great Britain.
Dicey taught law at the University of Oxford (1882–1909), where he was
Vinerian Professor of English law and a fellow of All Souls College, and
served as principal of the Working Men’s College, London (1899–1912).
Between 1886 and 1913 he wrote four books opposing Home
Rule in Ireland. In 1905 he published his Lectures on the Relation
Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth
Century.

His father was Thomas Edward Dicey, senior wrangler in 1811 and proprietor of
the Northampton Mercury and Chairman of the Midland Railway. His elder
brother was Edward James Stephen Dicey.[4] He was also a cousin of Leslie
Stephen and James Fitzjames Stephen.
Dicey was educated at King's College School in London and Balliol College,
Oxford, graduating with Firsts in classical moderations in 1856 and in literae
humaniores in 1858. In 1860 he won a fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford,
which he forfeited upon his marriage in 1872.
He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1863, subscribed to the Jamaica
Committee around 1865, and was appointed to the Vinerian Chair of English
Law at Oxford in 1882. In his first major work, the seminal Introduction to the
Study of the Law of the Constitution he outlined the principles of parliamentary
sovereignty for which he is most known. He argued that the British Parliament was
"an absolutely sovereign legislature" with the "right to make or unmake any law".
In the book, he defined the term "constitutional law" as including "all rules which
directly or indirectly affect the distribution or the exercise of the sovereign power
in the state".[5] He understood that the freedom British subjects enjoyed was
dependent on the sovereignty of Parliament, the impartiality of the courts free from
governmental interference and the supremacy of the common law. In 1890, he took
silk.[6]
He later left Oxford and went on to become one of the first Professors of Law at
the then new London School of Economics. There he published in 1896
his Conflict of Laws.[7] Upon his death in 1922, Harold Laski memorialized him as
"the most considerable figure in English jurisprudence since Maitland.

The jurist A. V. Dicey’s study of the Law of the Constitution (1885) has

been since its publication the dominant analysis of the British
constitution and the source of orthodoxy on such subjects as
parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. This canonical status has
obscured the originality of Dicey’s ideas in the history of legal and
political thought. Dicey reworked the traditional idea of sovereignty into
two separate concepts – legal and political sovereignty – in order to
square the common law notion of the sovereignty of parliament with
the democratic idea of the sovereignty of the people. He forged a new
concept – ‘the rule of law’ – to explain the legal basis of liberty in
common law countries in a manner that was both Benthamite and
constitutionalist. Finally, he provided a democratic and anti-federalist
rationale for maintaining the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. This
majoritarian, centralist and utilitarian constitutionalism has been one of
the most enduring products of Victorian scholarship. This article seeks
to recover it in its original context and, in so doing, to show the value of
reintegrating legal thought into the mainstream of modern British
history and the history of political thought.

Political position

Dicey was receptive to Jeremy Bentham's brand of individualist liberalism and

welcomed the extension of the franchise in 1867.[9][10] He was affiliated with the
group known as the "University Liberals" who composed the Essays on
Reform and was not ashamed to be labeled a Radical.[11]Dicey held that "personal
liberty is the basis of national welfare." He treated Parliamentary sovereignty as
the central premise of the British constitution.[12]
Dicey became a Liberal Unionist and a vigorous opponent of Home
Rule for Ireland and published and spoke against it extensively from 1886 until
shortly before his death, advocating that no concessions be made to Irish
nationalism in relation to the government of any part of Ireland as an integral part
of the United Kingdom.[13] He was thus bitterly disillusioned by the Anglo-Irish
Treaty agreement in 1921 that Southern Ireland should become a self-
governing dominion (the Irish Free State), separate from the United Kingdom.
Dicey was also vehemently opposed to women's suffrage, proportional
representation (while acknowledging that the existing first-past-the-postsystem
wasn't perfect), and to the notion that citizens have the right to ignore unjust laws.
Dicey viewed the necessity of establishing a stable legal system as more important
than the potential injustice that would occur from following unjust laws. In spite of
this, he did concede that there were circumstances in which it would be appropriate
to resort to an armed rebellion but stated that such occasions are extremely rare

Quotes
1. The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely, that
Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law
whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right
to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.

2. Our constitution, in short, is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all the features,
good and bad, of judge-made law.
3. The fact that the most arbitrary powers of the English executive must always be exercised under
Act of Parliament places the government, even when armed with the widest authority, under the
supervision, so to speak, of the Courts. Powers, however extraordinary, which are conferred or
sanctioned by statute, are never really unlimited, for they are confined by the words of the Act itself,
and, what is more, by the interpretation put upon the statute by the judges. Parliament is supreme
legislator, but from the moment Parliament has uttered its will as lawgiver, that will becomes subject
to the interpretation put upon it by the judges of the land.

Albert Venn Dicey's Law of the Constitution

Albert Venn Dicey's Law of the Constitution is one of the most influential books on public law in the
common law tradition—but it is also one of the most misunderstood. Dicey is generally thought to have
adopted an analytical or positivist method with a view to codifying the unwritten constitution as a set of
rules, but this characterization of his work sits uneasily with the book's comparative and historical
references and its underlying ' Whig' politics. Law of the Constitution is therefore thought to be
theoretically confused or even duplicitous and of little value to lawyers and legal scholars today. This
essay challenges this view of Dicey and his famous book. It examines Dicey's unpublished lecture notes
and private correspondence as well as his personal characteristics as a legal scholar and writer in an
effort to identify Dicey's own ideas about the theoretical foundations of his work. The result is a 'Dicey'
that might not be recognized today—one who embraced a legal theory that integrated analytical,
historical, comparative and normative elements of legal interpretation together through discursive
narratives about general principles. Read as an interpretation of legal principles rather than a textbook
of legal rules, Law of the Constitution regains its theoretical coherence and it may offer valuable lessons
for understanding constitutionalism today