ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the fault lines of the constitution which, under the impact of modernity, have caused it to change. It offers a brief assessment of some of the more legal aspects of the current spate of reforms: the mutation of the judiciary; the reform of civil justice; and the introduction of the Human Rights Act of 1998. The scheme of the Human Rights Act of 1998 seeks in effect to give legislative form to the description of the constitution proposed by A. V. Dicey. He says that the English constitution is still marked by peculiar features which may be summed up in the combination of Parliamentary Sovereignty with the Rule of Law. The Human Rights Act of 1998 is at one with the contemporary Whig hegemony. Some see it as a transfer of power from the legislature to the judges. It is not or, at least, not in any way that matters.
