Constitutionalism in the United Kingdom

This thesis defends the view that the United Kingdom's constitution should be conceived as a legal constitution. Part 1 confronts and rejects the arguments of two recent scholars who argue that the constitution should be conceived as a political constitution. It proposes that the way forward is to engage the question of how to marry mechanisms of political accountability and the constitution's political undergirding with a legal constitution and the protection of human rights. Part 2 begins this task by expounding a model of constitutionalism based upon the idea of a 'strong form' of constitutional dialogue between the branches. In so doing it reveals that the choice presented by the existing literature between viewing the Human Rights Act, 1998 from the perspective either of rights supremacy or 'principle-proposing' dialogue is a false one, since neither reflects the form of constitutionalism underpinning the Human Rights Act, 1998.