ABSTRACT
It is not parliament that is sovereign but the body of constitutional laws which defines the authority of parliament, along with that of various other agencies set up to safeguard the public interest and execute the national will. The interpreters of the law, the judges in the courts, have a different political weight and significance in a constitutional set-up of this kind. This is the same set-up as that of the European Community. The whole American approach to law is coloured by the aim of achieving a modus vivendi with the minimum of trouble among people who are expected to be very heterogeneous. There is another side of the legalistic approach to the European Community, pressed particularly by the French, which seems to me much more doubtful. The British Government fortunately comes into the Community without any of the ideological baggage which still clutters up the people who took part in the heroic first phase of the great enterprise.
