The common law does not generally speak in the language of constitutional rights, for the good reason that in the absence of any sovereign text, a written constitution which is logically and legally prior to the power of legislature, executive and judiciary alike, there is on the face of it no hierarchy of rights such that any one of them is more entrenched by the law than any other. And if the concept of a constitutional right is to have any meaning, it must surely sound in the protection which the law affords to it. Where a written constitution guarantees a right, there is no conceptual difficulty. The State authorities must give way to it, save to the extent that the constitution allows them to deny it. There may of course be other difficulties, such as whether on the constitution's true interpretation the right claimed exists at all. Even a superficial acquaintance with the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States shows that such problems may be acute. But they are not in the same category as the question: do we have constitutional rights at all? In the unwritten legal order of the British State, at a time when the common law continues to accord a legislative supremacy to Parliament, the notion of a constitutional right can in my judgment inhere only in this proposition, that the right in question cannot be abrogated by the State save by specific provision in an Act of Parliament, or by regulations whose vires in main legislation specifically confers the power to abrogate. General words will not suffice. And any such rights will be creatures of the common law, since their existence would not be the consequence of the democratic political process but would be logically prior to it. I shall explain in due course what I mean by a requirement of specific provision, a concept more elusive than it seems. LORD CHANCELLOR EX PARTE JOHN WITHAM, R v. [1997] EWHC Admin 237 (7th March, 1997) England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions After reviewing many authorities and the submissions of Counsel before him upon them Laws J continued: - "It seems to me, from all the authorities to which I have referred, that the common law has clearly given special weight to the citizen's right of access to the courts. It has been described as a constitutional right, though the cases do not explain what that means. In this whole argument nothing to my mind has been shown to displace the proposition that the executive cannot in law abrogate the right of access to justice, unless it is specifically so permitted by Parliament; and this is the meaning of the constitutional right. But I must explain, as I have indicated I would, what in my view the law requires by such a permission. A statute may give the permission expressly; in that case it would provide in terms that in defined circumstances the citizen may not enter the court door. In Ex Parte Leech [1994] QB 198 the Court of Appeal accepted, as in its view the ratio of their lordships' decision in Raymond v Honey [1983] 1.A.C.1 vouchsafed, that it could also be done by necessary implication. However for my part I find great difficulty in conceiving a form of words capable of making it plain beyond doubt to the statute's reader that the provision in question prevents him from going to court (for that is what would be required), save in a case where that is expressly stated. The class of cases where it could be done by necessary implication is, I venture to think, a class with no members." Juncal, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Ors [2007] EWHC 3024 (Admin) (19 December 2007)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/3024.html
Cite as: [2007] EWHC 3024 (Admin), [2008] MHLR 79, [2008] ACD 28
No comments:
Post a Comment