" Relation between Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Rule of Law".
AND THE RULE OF LAW
The sovereignty of Parliament and the supremacy of the law of the land — the two principles which pervade the whole of the English constitution — may appear to stand in opposition to each other, or to be at best only counterbalancing forces. But this appearance is delusive; the sovereignty of Parliament, as contrasted with other forms of sovereign power, favours the supremacy of the law, whilst the predominance of rigid legality throughout our institutions evokes the exercise, and thus increases the authority, of Parliamentary sovereignty.
The sovereignty of Parliament favours the supremacy of the law of the land.
That this should be so arises in the main from two characteristics or peculiarities which distinguish the English Parliament from other sovereign powers.
The first of these characteristics is that the commands of Parliament (consisting as it does of the Crown, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons) can be uttered only through the combined action of its three constituent parts, and must, therefore, always take the shape of formal and deliberate legislation. The will of Parliament1 can be expressed only through an Act of Parliament.
i A strong, if not the strongest, argument in favour of the so-called "bi-cameral" system, is to be found in the consideration that the coexistence of two legislative chambers prevents the confusion of resolutions passed by either House with laws, and thus checks the sub-
This is no mere matter of form; it has most important practical effects. It prevents those inroads upon the law of the land which a despotic monarch, such as Louis XIV., Napoleon I., or Napoleon HI., might effect by ordinances or decrees, or which the different constituent assemblies of France, and above all the famous Convention, carried out by sudden resolutions. The principle that Parliament speaks only through an Act of Parliament greatly increases the authority of the judges. A Bill which has passed into a statute immediately becomes subject to judicial interpretation, and the English Bench have always refused, in principle at least, to interpret an Act of Parliament otherwise than by reference to the words of the enactment. An English judge will take no notice of the resolutions of either House, of anything which may have passed in debate (a matter of which officially he has no cognisance), or even of the changes which a Bill may have undergone between the moment of its first introduction to Parliament and of its receiving the Royal assent. All this, which seems natural enough to an English lawyer, would greatly surprise many foreign legists, and no doubt often does give a certain narrowness to the judicial construction of statutes. It contributes greatly, however, both (as I have already pointed out) to the authority of the judges and to the fixity of the law.2
The second of these characteristics is that the English Parliament as such has never, except at periods of revolution, exercised direct executive power or appointed the officials of the executive government.
No doubt in modern times the House of Commons has in substance obtained the right to designate for appointment the Prime Minister and the other members of the Cabinet. But this right is, historically speaking, of recent acquisition, and is exercised in a very
stitution of the arbitrary will of an assembly for the supremacy of the ordinary law of the land. Whoever wishes to appreciate the force of this argument should weigh well the history, not only of the French Convention but also of the English Long Parliament. 2 The principle that the sovereign legislature can express its commands only in the particular form of an Act of Parliament originates of course in historical causes; it is due to the fact that an Act of Parliament was once in reality, what it still is in form, a law "enacted by the King by and with the advice and consent of the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled."
roundabout manner; its existence does not affect the truth of the assertion that the Houses of Parliament do not directly appoint or dismiss the servants of the State; neither the House of Lords nor the House of Commons, nor both Houses combined, could even now issue a direct order to a military officer, a constable, or a tax-collector; the servants of the State are still in name what they once were in reality — "servants of the Crown"; and, what is worth careful notice, the attitude of Parliament towards government officials was determined originally, and is still regulated, by considerations and feelings belonging to a time when the "servants of the Crown" were dependent upon the King, that is, upon a power which naturally excited the jealousy and vigilance of Parliament.
Hence several results all indirectly tending to support the supremacy of the law. Parliament, though sovereign, unlike a sovereign monarch who is not only a legislator but a ruler, that is, head of the executive government, has never hitherto been able to use the powers of the government as a means of interfering with the regular course of law;3 and what is even more important, Parliament has looked with disfavour and jealousy on all exemptions of officials from the ordinary liabilities of citizens or from the jurisdiction of the ordinary Courts; Parliamentary sovereignty has been fatal to the growth of "administrative law." The action, lastly, of Parliament has tended as naturally to protect the independence of the judges, as that of other sovereigns to protect the conduct of officials. It is worth notice that Parliamentary care for judicial independence has, in fact, stopped just at that point where on a priori grounds it might be expected to end. The judges are not in strictness irremovable; they can be removed from office on an address of the two Houses; they have been made by Parliament independent of every power in the State except the Houses of Parliament.
The idea may suggest itself to a reader that the characteristics or peculiarities of the English Parliament on which I have just dwelt must now be common to most of the representative assemblies which exist in continental Europe. The French National Assembly, for
3 Contrast with this the way in which, even towards the end of the eighteenth century, French Kings interfered with the action of the Courts.
'endency o support ule orlaw iften not ound in oreign epresenta-ive as-emblies.
Rule of law favours Parliamentary sovereignty.
example, bears a considerable external resemblance to our own Parliament. It is influenced, however, by a different spirit; it is the heir, in more ways than one, of the Bourbon Monarchy and the Napoleonic Empire. It is apparently, though on this point a foreigner must speak with hesitation, inclined to interfere in the details of administration. It does not look with special favour on the independence or authority of the ordinary judges. It shows no disapprobation of the system oidroit administratif which Frenchmen — very likely with truth — regard as an institution suited to their country, and it certainly leaves in the hands of the government wider executive and even legislative powers than the English Parliament has ever conceded either to the Crown or to its servants. What is true of France is true under a different form of many other continental states, such, for example, as Switzerland or Prussia. The sovereignty of Parliament as developed in England supports the supremacy of the law. But this is certainly not true of all the countries which now enjoy representative or Parliamentary government.
The supremacy of the law necessitates the exercise of Parliamentary sovereignty.
The rigidity of the law constantly hampers (and sometimes with great injury to the public) the action of the executive, and from the hard-and-fast rules of strict law, as interpreted by the judges, the government can escape only by obtaining from Parliament the discretionary authority which is denied to the Crown by the law of the land. Note with care the way in which the necessity for discretionary powers brings about the recourse to exceptional legislation. Under the complex conditions of modern life no government can in times of disorder, or of war, keep the peace at home, or perform its duties towards foreign powers, without occasional use of arbitrary authority. During periods, for instance, of social disturbance you need not only to punish conspirators, but also to arrest men who are reasonably suspected of conspiracy; foreign revolutionists are known to be spreading sedition throughout the land; order can hardly be maintained unless the executive can expel aliens. When two foreign nations are at war, or when civil contests divide a friendly country into two hostile camps, it is impossible for England to perform her duties
as a neutral unless the Crown has legal authority to put a summary check to the attempts of English sympathisers to help one or other of the belligerents. Foreign nations, again, feel aggrieved if they are prevented from punishing theft and homicide, — if, in short, their whole criminal law is weakened because every scoundrel can ensure impunity for his crimes by an escape to England. But this result must inevitably ensue if the English executive has no authority to surrender French or German offenders to the government of France or of Germany. The English executive needs therefore the right to exercise discretionary powers, but the Courts must prevent, and will prevent at any rate where personal liberty is concerned, the exercise by the government of any sort of discretionary power. The Crown cannot, except under statute, expel from England any alien4 whatever, even though he were a murderer who, after slaughtering a whole family at Boulogne, had on the very day crossed red-handed to Dover. The executive therefore must ask for, and always obtains, aid from Parliament. An Alien Act enables the Ministry in times of disturbance to expel any foreigner from the country; a Foreign Enlistment Act makes it possible for the Ministry to check intervention in foreign contests or the supply of arms to foreign belligerents. Extradition Acts empower the government at the same time to prevent England from becoming a city of refuge for foreign criminals, and to co-operate with foreign states in that general repression of crime in which the whole civilised world has an interest. Nor have we yet exhausted the instances in which the rigidity of the law necessitates the intervention of Parliament. There are times of tumult or invasion when for the sake of legality itself the rules of law must be broken. The course which the government must then take is dear. The Ministry must break the law and trust for protection to an Act of Indemnity. A statute of this kind is (as already pointed out5) the last and supreme exercise of Parliamentary sovereignty. It legalises illegality; it affords the practical solution of the problem which perplexed the statesmanship of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, how to combine the mainte-
4 See, however, p. 137, note 22, ante.
5 See pp. 10, H, 142-145, ante.
nance of law and the authority of the Houses of Parliament with the free exercise of that kind of discretionary power or prerogative which, under some shape or other, must at critical junctures be wielded by the executive government of every civilised country.
This solution may be thought by some critics a merely formal one, or at best only a substitution of the despotism of Parliament for the prerogative of the Crown. But this idea is erroneous. 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, and the judges, who are influenced by the feelings of magistrates no less than by the general spirit of the common law, are disposed to construe statutory exceptions to common law principles in a mode which would not commend itself either to a body of officials, or to the Houses of Parliament, if the Houses were called upon to interpret their own enactments. In foreign countries, and especially in France, administrative ideas — notions derived from the traditions of a despotic monarchy — have restricted the authority and to a certain extent influenced the ideas of the judges. In England judicial notions have modified the action and influenced the ideas of the executive government. By every path we come round to the same conclusion, that Parliamentary sovereignty has favoured the rule of law, and that the supremacy of the law of the land both calls forth the exertion of Parliamentary sovereignty, and leads to its being exercised in a spirit of legality.
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