Law

This chapter offers a legal perspective on democratization by focusing on a tightly linked set of issues straddling the border between political and judicial power as they have arisen in, first, the United Kingdom, second, Britain’s relationship with the European Union, and third, the wider international system. The history of the English common law is instructive as to how judicial power emerged through the centuries of royal power. The idea of judges being capable of testing statutes to destruction if they were found to be against a fundamental principle of law raises the possibility for judicial power rather than parliamentary to sit at the apex of the constitution. The Human Rights Act 1998 significantly changed how rights are enjoyed in England and Wales, by incorporating for the first time into domestic law the main substance of the European Convention on Human Rights signed in 1950.