The Rule of Law
The rule of law, although popularised by Dicey was not invented by him. Prior and Post Dicey, different theorists had considered it, namely, Von Hayek, Socrates, Raz and E.P Thompson. In 1885, A.V Dicey's book supported the theory of the English constitution as opposed to the written constitutions of other countries. However, there have been schools of thought that Diceys ideas are now outdated but recently, especially with the senior members of the judiciary, they have come back into favour. It is common knowledge that Britain's constitution is an unwritten one as it is not contained in one document and much of it has no legal status. The Diceyan argument was that not only was this irrelevant, but it was in fact of beneficial advantage. Dicey summarised the concept of he rule of law under three headings.Primarily, the principle concerned the rule of law an
The final principle concerned individual rights and it stipulated that the constitution is a result of regular ordinary laws of the land. That is all government actions must be authorised by the law. Ithe decision was that there was no law that forbade the act and thus it must be legal. However, the more recent case of Malone v Metropolitan Police Commissioner ruled to the contrary. In this case, the courts declared that the secretary of state could not order the search of Entick's house, because there was no law that authorised such searches. This judgement was in accord with the rule of law. The concept of equality is one, which has always been open to a lot of critique as exceptions to this can be easily pointed out even by lay men. It holds that everyone including the government and its officials are equal before the law. This was not in terms with discriminatory provisions and could be considered a first step towards anti-discrimination acts eg Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act. The court rejected the arguments of 'state necessity' or that there was one law for government activities and another for ordinary people. No person could be punished or interfered with by the authorities unless the law authorised it. The government could do as it pleased and there would be no legal controls over its activities. Dicey believed that regular law was absolutely predominant over abritary and wide discretionary powers. The UK adopts a dualist approach, which means that international law is not automatcally part of UK law until incorporated by statute.
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