Sovereignty in British Legal Doctrine
| Autor | Joaquín Varela Suanzes-Carpegna |
| Cargo | Catedrático de Derecho Constitucional de la Universidad de Huelva |
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This article was firstly published in spanish in the first number of "Fundamentos. Cuadernos Monográficos de Teoría del Estado, Derecho Público e Historia Constitucional", Junta General del Principado de Asturias, Oviedo, 1998, pp. 87-165, and intituled as "La soberanía en la doctrina británica: de Bracton a Dicey". This translation into english has been made by Manuel Calzada, Professor of Law at the australian University of Murdoch. The electronic journal of this University, "E-Law", published for the first time the english edition of this article in September 1999 (volume 6, number 3) http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/indices/issue/v6n3.html. I would like to thank prof. Calzada for his splendid translation, that has now only been modified to actualize the bibliography.
By titling this article 'Sovereignty in British Legal Doctrine' rather than 'The British Doctrine of Sovereignty' I wanted to underline that I am not only going to examine the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty, genuinely British, but also the sovereignty of the people, which is common throughout western juridical and political theory. In reality, it is the juxtaposition between both doctrines of sovereignty that the following pages revolve around, which also address the link between Parliament and Judges or, expressed in a different manner, between the law and its judicial control. For that purpose we are going to analyse no less than six centuries of doctrinal thought, divided into four stages: the first of them extends from the Low Middle Ages to the Revolution of 1688; the second is based on one single author, John Locke, and one single book, "The Second Treatise on Civil Government", the importance of which for the subject matter that is dealt with here was decisive; the third concerns the work of three 18th century authors: Hume, Blackstone and Paley; and, finally, the fourth and last starts with an analysis of Bentham's doctrine, an author sitting between the 18th and 19th centuries, it continues with Austin and ends with Dicey.
British thought on sovereignty was not always linked to the current juridical order. Sometimes it took place on the periphery of that order or even against it, as it happened with Locke and specially with Bentham. In any case what we are interested in is not to examine the way in which the British Juridical order went about regulating sovereignty, but only how the doctrine understood this faculty, to whom it has been attributed and under what conditions. The references to the juridical order or to the institutions that this has created will be, then, those essential to understand the doctrinal thinking regarding sovereignty.
The British Doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty surges towards the end of the 16th century, when it is attributed to Parliament, and not separately to the Monarch - as it was happening in Western Europe - the supreme or unlimited capacity to approve laws, which is the principal characteristic of sovereignty as it was highlighted - as we shall see later - by the creator of that concept, Jean Bodin.
That being so, it is then no less true that the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty has clear medieval origins, as it was in the Middle Ages that the supremacy of this institution was affirmed in the juridical creation, although the unlimited character of this creation was not totally sustained.
The doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament is, at the same time, intimately linked to the medieval idea of the supremacy of the law - the rule of law - by virtue of which all public powers, including the King, must submit to the law, although at the time what was public and what was private was not clearly distinguished.
The submission of the King to the law was proclaimed by Henry de Bracton in De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, possibly written between 1272 and 12771 and that McIllwain considers the most important book on Law and Constitutionalism in England or any other European Nation2.
In this book Bracton established a clear separation between the gubernaculum and the jurisdictio, that is, between the sphere of power or control - in the hands of the Monarch - and the sphere of the administration of justice, of which the Monarch was a part but to which he was, at the same time, subjected3 Bracton recognises on the King of England an absolute freedom to approve and modify the juridical rules required to execute the Gubernaculu that received the name of leges, constitutiones y assisae, but in exchange he limited the jurisdiction of the King in what concerned the lex terrae that could only be approved (or simply confirmed) and repealed by the King when he could count with the consent of the barons of the kingdom assembled in the Curia Regis, an institution that in addition to exercising legislative and executive functions acted as the kingdom's Supreme Justice Tribunal4
This concept of law, negotiated between the King and his Curia included, in a very small way, written rules. This happened, for example, with the Magna Carta in 1215 the most relevant juridical document of the Lower English Middle Ages and with which, as Maitland recalls5, English Statute Law commences. It was a feudal contract by virtue of which King John committed himself to respect the privileges of 'freemen', that is, of noblemen and prelates, compelling himself to obtain their consent to the imposition of taxes, to respect their property and to faithfully comply with a body of procedural guarantees6
But the law emanating from the king and his barons was made up, primarily of unwritten customs, some very ancient, that the king and his Curia simply 'confirmed' rather than 'approved'. This is the customary law, or common law, that Bracton primarily refers to when he points out in one of the most important and best known paragraphs of his book, that it is the law that makes the king and not the other way around: Ipse autem rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub deo et sub lege, quia lex faacit regem7
In arguing the subordination of the king to the law - understood above all as custom - Bracton formulated a principle common to the whole of Europe that stood during the whole of the Middle Ages, despite the reception of Roman Law in continental Europe from the 12th century, a reception much less relevant in England than in the Continent. As Passerin D'Entreves wrote, "Contrary to the roman thesis that the laws and the Law are the creation of a legislature will that act consciously and deliberately, whether as the will of a particular ruler or of a specific community, medieval doctrine starts from a conception which is the exact antithesis of that one. The Law does not owe its existence to a willed act of creation but instead is conceived as an aspect of collective life, as custom; the legislative act is not a manifestation of a normative will, but a simple written record of what is already lived as Law in the use and customs of its men"8
Nevertheless it would be as erroneous to reduce medieval law - whether English or Continental - to customary law as to reduce our current law to written law. Not only because the English king, as it was previously mentioned, could dictate written rules, but also because this was the same character shared by some laws approved by the king with the acquiescence of his Curia, Surely not that many, but as important as the Magna Carta. From the laws approved by the king and his Curia would be born the so-called statute law and the common law.
Despite that, it is necessary to agree with Passerin D'Entreves that in England as much as in Continental Europe, the prevalent law in the Middle Ages was customary law, submission to which the king was required to swear before acceding to the throne. The Coronation Oath was the name given in England to this solemn swearing. The identification of law with custom instead of with written law becomes, in addition, of particular relevance to understand the role of the monarch as judge more than as legislator, that is, as titular of a function closer to the iurisdiction than to legislatio, to that of discoverer and enforcer of old law than to that of creator of new law9
There is no doubt that 'the rule of law' was perfected in England with the birth of Parliament, often dated to 1265 - three years before Bracton's death - when Simon of Monfort called the Curis Regis in an unusual way, requiring the presence of the representatives of the cities, which until then were not members of the Curia. During the second half of the 14th century Parliament was divided into two chambers that deliberated separately; that of the Lords, where prelates and noblemen sat, and that of the Commons, in which the representatives of the cities met. Also during that century and following a slow institutional differentiation initiated in the times of the Curis Regis, the King's Council or Concilium Regis, managed to...
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