Our Republican Constitution

by Tomkins, Adam

• ISBN13: 9781841135229
• ISBN10: 1841135224
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-02-01
• Publisher: Hart Publishing

Summary

This new book by Adam Tomkins sets out a radical vision of the British constitution. It argues that despite its outwardly monarchic form the constitution is profoundly informed, and indeed shaped, by values and practices of republicanism. The republican reading of the constitution presented in this book places political accountability at the core of the constitutional order. As such, Our Republican Constitution offers a powerful rejoinder to the current trend in legal scholarship that sees the common law and the courts, rather than Parliament, as the central players in holding government to account. The book further contends that while the constitution should be understood as having republican foundations, current constitutional practice is, in a number of respects, insufficiently republican in character. The book closes by outlining a programme of republican constitutional reform that is designed to secure genuinely responsible government.This is an original and provocative reinterpretation of the central themes of the British constitution, drawing on constitutional history (especially of the seventeenth century), political theory and public law.

Author Biography

Adam Tomkins is the John Millar Professor of Public Law at the University of Glasgow.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
1 On the Political Constitution	1	(32)
I The Ideal of Political Accountability	1	(9)
Political Accountability and the British Constitution	1	(5)
Political Accountability under Challenge	6	(4)
II The Model of Legal Constitutionalism	10	(23)
The Six Tenets of Legal Constitutionalism	10	(15)
What's Wrong with Legal Constitutionalism?	25	(8)
2 Republican Constitutionalism	33	(34)
I Republicanism and Constitutional Law	33	(13)
The Shape of British Public Law Scholarship	33	(5)
Republicanism to the Rescue	38	(2)
Republicanism in the Constitutional Law Literature	40	(6)
II Republicanism in Philosophy and History	46	(11)
Republican Political Philosophy	46	(6)
Republicanism in the History of Political Thought	52	(5)
III The Three Themes of Republicanism	57	(10)
Anti-monarchism and Popular Sovereignty	57	(4)
Freedom as Non-domination and its Consequences	61	(3)
The Institutional Design of Accountability	64	(3)
3 The Making of the Republican Constitution	67	(48)
I The Failure of the Common Law Constitution	69	(18)
Prohibitions, Proclamations and Sir Edward Coke	70	(4)
Impositions and Bate's Case	74	(3)
Towards the Petition of Right	77	(4)
Parliamentary Privilege and Eliot's Case	81	(2)
Ship-money: R v Hampden	83	(4)
II The Rise of the Republican Constitution	87	(22)
The Development of the Neo-Roman Case	87	(3)
The Emergence of Republican Accountability	90	(4)
Civil War, Commonwealth and Protectorate	94	(1)
The Restoration of the Republican Constitution	95	(3)
The Republican Constitution Threatened	98	(4)
The Confirmation of the Republican Constitution	102	(6)
Conclusion-Our Republican Constitution	108	(1)
III An English or a British Republic?	109	(6)
4 Republican Constitutional Reform	115	(28)
I A Warning to Legal Constitutionalists	115	(9)
The Independence of the Judiciary	115	(3)
Judicial Authority and the Crown	118	(6)
II Parliamentary Government Today	124	(7)
The Worst-Case Diagnosis	125	(1)
Re-assessing the Parliamentary Record	126	(4)
Conclusion	130	(1)
III A Republican Future?	131	(9)
Prerogative Powers	132	(2)
Open Government	134	(2)
Parliament and Party	136	(3)
The Crown	139	(1)
IV Afterword	140	(3)
Bibliography	143	(10)
Index	153