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170 results

Page 1 of 9

  • 2 - Law and the Constitution

  • from Part I - Perspectives
  • Edited by Peter Cane, Christ's College, Cambridge and Australian National University, H. Kumarasingham, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom
  • Published online: 12 August 2023
  • Print publication: 17 August 2023, pp 35-58

  • Summary

    ‘Law’ and ‘constitution’, like other concepts we use to make sense of the world, have a history.1 In the case of law, part of that history is the ongoing interplay between two different ideas. One is that law concerns what people should, should not and may do. In other words, law is ‘normative’. Another is that law is a product of human activity. Human beings and institutions can and do make and enforce legal norms.

  • 8 - The Constitution of Rights

  • from Part I - Perspectives
  • Edited by Peter Cane, Christ's College, Cambridge and Australian National University, H. Kumarasingham, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom
  • Published online: 12 August 2023
  • Print publication: 17 August 2023, pp 195-220

  • Summary

    The year 2015 witnessed celebrations around the world of an event that took place 800 years earlier in a meadow west of the city of London near what is now Heathrow Airport. Then, the main participants were King John on the one side, and leading barons and prelates on the other. They had gathered to sign up formally to a document (which came to be known as Magna Carta) with the aim of forestalling violent rebellion against the monarchy. Eight centuries later, four provisions of the 1297 re-issue of Magna Carta still decorate the United Kingdom’s statute book even though the document was not a ‘statute’ (or, for that matter, a ‘law’) in the modern sense and the surviving provisions are of no practical significance.

The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom
  • Volume 2, The Changing Constitution
  • Edited by Peter Cane, H. Kumarasingham
  • Published online: 12 August 2023
  • Print publication: 17 August 2023
  • Featuring contributions from leading scholars of history, law and politics, this path-breaking work traces the development of the United Kingdom's constitution from Anglo-Saxon times and explores its role in the creation, exercise and control of public power. Essays in Volume Two, entitled 'The Changing Constitution', examine the development of the constitution from the departure of the Romans up to the present day and beyond. Together, the two volumes form the first, wide-ranging history of the constitution to be published for more than 50 years. By its cross-disciplinary approach, taking account of the latest legal, political and historical scholarship on the constitution, it fills a large gap in the literature of the constitution, and in political thought and British history.

The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom
  • Volume 1, Exploring the Constitution
  • Edited by Peter Cane, H. Kumarasingham
  • Published online: 12 August 2023
  • Print publication: 17 August 2023
  • Featuring contributions from leading scholars of history, law and politics, this path-breaking two-volume work traces the development of the United Kingdom's constitution from Anglo-Saxon times and explores its role in the creation, exercise and control of public power. Chapters in Volume One, entitled 'Exploring the Constitution', approach the constitution and its history from various scholarly perspectives, and provide historically sensitive discussions of constitutional actors and institutions, and of political traditions and transformations of the constitution. Together, the two volumes form the first, wide-ranging history of the constitution to be published for decades. By their cross-disciplinary approach, taking account of the latest legal, political and historical scholarship on the constitution, they fill a large gap in the literature of the constitution, and in political thought and British history.

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