The Rule of Law and Parliamentary Sovereignty

The rule of law is absolute, constituting the basis of the legal order within which legislative sovereignty must be located and defined. The supremacy of the rule of law entails recognition of a fundamental division of sovereignty. The common law, which today holds the existence of a free and democratic society as its basic tenet, must be viewed as built on two complementary and lawfully unalterable principles: the operation of a democratic legislature and the operation of independent courts. This chapter discusses judicial review of administrative action, the moral foundations of H. L. A. Hart's ‘rule of recognition’, the evolution of the rule of recognition citing human rights and European law, and the constitutional limits of parliamentary sovereignty.