Questioning Sovereignty

Abstract

This book examines the transformation of sovereignty in the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU), the transition from sovereign states to post-sovereign states, devolution and nationalism, and the future of the British union. It applies the institutional theory of law to a general inquiry into the relations of law and state, and to the question of the character of a Rechtsstaat or state under the rule of law. This clears the ground for a historical/analytical review of the UK as union state, and of the Benthamite or Diceyan view of its constitution, grounded in the idea of sovereignty. Can that sovereignty survive diffusion of power within the British state? Or can it survive the development of the EU and the supremacy in it of European Community (EC) law? Was there a revolution in 1972, when Parliament enacted the European Communities Act, or later, when the House of Lords held that subsequent Acts of Parliament should be ‘disapplied’ when they conflict with EC law? The potential for conflict between EU member state constitutions and European legal order is no less in other member states — Germany, France, Ireland, and the others. Indeed the issue is perhaps whether in the long run constitutional conflicts are inevitable. This leads to a consideration of pluralistic as against monistic accounts of legal order viewed as a whole, and finally to a review of the concept of sovereignty.

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