Albert Venn Dicey (February 4, 1835 – April 7, 1922) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
juristA jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
and
constitutionConstitutional law is a body of law dealing with the distribution and exercise of government power.Not all nation states have codified constitutions, though all such states have a jus commune, or law of the land, that may consist of a variety of imperative and consensual rules...
al theorist who wrote
An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885). The principles it expounds are considered part of the uncodified British constitution. He was a graduate of
Balliol College, OxfordBalliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England.Traditionally, the undergraduates are amongst the most politically active in the university, and the college's alumni include three former prime ministers. H. H...
and became
Vinerian Professor of English LawThe Vinerian Professorship of English Law, formerly Vinerian Professorship of Common Law, was established by Charles Viner who by his will, dated 29 December 1755, left about £12,000 to the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford, to establish a Professorship of the Common Law...
at
OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
and a leading constitutional scholar of his day.
He became a lawyer in 1863 and was appointed to the Vinerian Chair of English Law at Oxford in 1882.
The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely, that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.
Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution [Eighth Edition, 1915] (LibertyClassics, 1982), pp. 3-4.
Our constitution, in short, is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all the features, good and bad, of judge-made law.
Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution [Eighth Edition, 1915] (LibertyClassics, 1982), p. 116.
Albert Venn Dicey (February 4, 1835 – April 7, 1922) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
juristA jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
and
constitutionConstitutional law is a body of law dealing with the distribution and exercise of government power.Not all nation states have codified constitutions, though all such states have a jus commune, or law of the land, that may consist of a variety of imperative and consensual rules...
al theorist who wrote
An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885). The principles it expounds are considered part of the uncodified British constitution. He was a graduate of
Balliol College, OxfordBalliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England.Traditionally, the undergraduates are amongst the most politically active in the university, and the college's alumni include three former prime ministers. H. H...
and became
Vinerian Professor of English LawThe Vinerian Professorship of English Law, formerly Vinerian Professorship of Common Law, was established by Charles Viner who by his will, dated 29 December 1755, left about £12,000 to the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford, to establish a Professorship of the Common Law...
at
OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
and a leading constitutional scholar of his day.
Biography
He became a lawyer in 1863 and was appointed to the Vinerian Chair of English Law at Oxford in 1882. In his first major work, the seminal
An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, Dicey warned that
freedomPolitical freedom is the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression.The opposite of a free society is a totalitarian state, which highly restricts political freedom in order to regulate almost every aspect of behavior...
was under attack by modern incursions against the
Rule of LawThe rule of law, also called supremacy of law, means that the law is above everyone and it applies to everyone. Whether governor or governed, rulers or ruled, no one is above the law, no one is exempted from the law, and no one can grant exemption to the application of the law.Rule of law is a...
. He understood that the freedom
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
subjects enjoyed was dependent on the
sovereigntySovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
of
ParliamentThe Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories. It alone has parliamentary sovereignty, conferring upon it ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and its territories...
, the impartiality of the courts free from governmental interference and the supremacy of
Common LawCommon law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals , rather than through legislative statutes or executive action, and to corresponding legal systems that rely on precedential case law....
.
He later left Oxford and went on to become one of the first Professors of Law at the then new
London School of EconomicsThe London School of Economics and Political Science, commonly referred to as the London School of Economics or LSE, is a specialist constituent college of the University of London in London, England....
. There he published in 1896 his "Conflict of Laws."
Dicey was a vigorous opponent of Irish Home Rule and published and spoke against it extensively from 1886 until shortly before his death, advocating that no concessions be made to Irish nationalism in relation to the government of any part of Ireland as an integral part of the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
. He was thus bitterly disillusioned by the agreement in 1921 that
Southern IrelandSouthern Ireland was the short-lived autonomous region of the United Kingdom established on 3 May 1921 and dissolved on 6 December 1922....
should become a self-governing dominion (the
Irish Free StateThe Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand....
), separate from the United Kingdom. As extensively shown in the work of Professor Matt Qvortrup, A.V. Dicey was also one of the first supporters of the use of referenda in the United Kingdom despite his views on parliamentary supremacy.
Other notable works include:
The Privy CouncilA privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation on how to exercise their executive authority, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government...
(1887) and
Lectures on the Relation Between Law & Public Opinion In England (1905). He was the younger brother of
Edward DiceyEdward James Stephen Dicey was an English writer, journalist, and editor.Dicey was the son of Thomas Edward Dicey, owner of the Northampton Mercury, and Anne Mary, née Stephen...
.