Alan Brudner's constitutional theory offers us an ideal constitution or 'heaven of laws'. His theory maps a constitution heavy with law. Law permeates and supports a host of dense networks and relationships between individuals, communities and the state. It also specifies a very comprehensive...

This article takes a critical look at classic rights-based theories of the constitution, as exemplified in the UK by common law constitutionalism. Drawing on an analysis of a group of cases decided both before and after the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, it is argued that even in...

This article charts the rise of a new, and increasingly influential, theory of public law: common law constitutionalism. The theory can best be seen as a response to a 'crisis' within contemporary public law thought produced by an array of different pressures: Thatcherite reformation of the...

This paper considers the character of moral peoplehood, our life as a people, and the rules and principles through which that life is expressed. In so far as those rules and principles take legal form, as determining the ground rules of association and denoting political rights and duties, this...

Since we tend to think of the state as a construct of law, how is it possible for a category of state action to exist somehow outside or beyond the law? Using the term ‘reason of state' to specify this special category, the paper asks two more specific questions. When someone talks about...

This paper defends reason of state as an explanatory category. It begins with an analysis of the law relating to the prerogative, before observing that prerogative cases are much less typical today than an expanding suite of cases involving related matters but where the power in question is...