Sovereignty of parliament: history and philosophy.

The Sovereignty of Parliament: History and Philosophy by Jeffrey Goldsworthy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999

Ever since Lord Bryce published `The Decline of Legislatures' in 1921, the law-making function of parliaments has been largely ignored by academics, if not belittled. This has resulted in an inadequate understanding of the importance of the parliamentary system and the meaning of such fundamental concepts as the sovereignty of parliament. Jeffrey Goldsworthy, an Associate Professor of Law at Australia's Monash University, in this well-researched and readable book, tries to reverse this trend by providing a very comprehensive analysis of the nature and source of this doctrine which is still at core of the legal systems in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. He traces its evolution in England from the earliest beginnings of Parliament to the nineteenth century and provides a thoughtful discussion on how parliamentary authority relates to the common law, to the judiciary and to the moral duty to disobey, and how parliamentary sovereignty relates to popular sovereignty and the right of resistance.

While his approach is primarily historical, it is also philosophical and works of all the great English philosophers from medieval to early modern to modern are referred to, for example Sir Thomas More, Fortescue, Coke, Hobbes, Locke, Blackstone, Burke, Adam Smith, Bagehot, Dicey, Austin, H.L.A. Hart and Dworkin. This survey of thinkers on Parliament and the law is a helpful introductory or refresher course for students of parliament although invariably (and understandably) he has given short shrift to the contributions made to the discussion by some of the giants, such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

For Goldsworthy, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty maintains that Parliament has the ultimate authority to determine what the law shall be. Judges can declare what the law is but are bound to accept every Act of Parliament as valid law. He attacks the historical myths which surround the

concept, such as that the omnipotence of Parliament was `inspired by Hobbes and invented by Blackstone'. He convincingly points to historical evidence that the legal power of Parliament was recognised as supreme and absolute well before the sixteenth century. He also challenges recent thinking put forward by such critics of the doctrine as Trevor Allen and Michael Detmold that judges only obey statutes because they are required to do so by...