The most conventional meaning of the 'legislative supremacy of Parliament' was adopted by Dicey

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The most conventional meaning of the ‘legislative supremacy of Parliament’ was adopted by Dicey who described it by:

     ‘’(N) either more nor less than this, namely, that parliament thus defined as, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatsoever; and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.’’

The unlimited legislative authority consisted of the Queen, the HL2 and the HC3.   In terms of Dicey’s explanation, the principle of legislative supremacy had both negative and positive aspects.  On the negative aspect, it meant that there was ‘no person or body of person who can….make rules which override or derogate from an Act of Parliament’.  Alternatively, the positive aspect, it meant that all acts of Parliament and whatever their purpose, would be acted upon by the courts.  Wade committed his attention to the basis of legal sovereignty.  According to Wade, it was to be found in the rule that the courts obey Acts of Parliament.  Furthermore he argued that 4;

   ‘’It [Parliamentary supremacy] is the law because it is the law, and for no other reason than it is possible for the law itself to take notice of.  No statute can confer this power upon Parliament, for this would be to assume and act on the very power that it to be conferred.’’

Historically, (pre-1688), the unlimited legislative authority was not always accepted by the courts. Thus, in Dr Banham’s Case (1610), Coke LJ was of the opinion that the common law had the power to control Acts of Parliament and to sometimes void.    However, these cases were decided prior to the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, from which date the legislative supremacy of Parliament has been recognises by the courts.

Following the events of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, the Bill of Rights 1688 did not take the form of a conventional ‘rights’ documents.  However, arguably that it was as much about the ‘wrongs’ of James II as it was about the ‘rights’ of the people.  However, its constitutional significance lies in the fact that it asserted the supremacy of Parliament over the monarch.  From that point onward, matters such as the levying of taxation or the raising or keeping of a standing army could not be done without the grant or consent of Parliament.   It was Parliament which now had legislative power.  

Another example of Parliamentary Supremacy comes from the ‘judicial obedience to legislation enacted by Parliament’.   In Exp Canon Selwyn (1872), a case which raised the question of the validity of the monarch’s assent to the Irish Church Disestablishment Act 1869, Cockburn LJ stated that:

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‘(T)here is no judicial body in the country by which the validity of an Act of Parliament could be questioned.  An Act of the legislature is superior in authority to any court of law.  We have only to administer the law as we find it, and no court could pronounce a judgement as to the validity of an Act of Parliament’.

Lord Wolf 5 has argued that there may be circumstances in which the courts might no longer be required to obey an Act of Parliament. In his opinion;

‘….I myself would consider there were advantages in making ...

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