ABSTRACT
The great South African case of Harris v. Minister of the Interior will have turned the thoughts of many lawyers to the subject of legal sovereignty. An orthodox English lawyer, brought up consciously or unconsciously on the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty stated by Coke and Blackstone, and enlarged upon by Dicey, could explain it in simple terms. Even the proposition that English law knows no means of "entrenching" sovereign legislation, which most English lawyers would accept as a self-evident truth, has been questioned or denied by leading authorities. The sovereign Parliament's inability to bind its successors arises from exactly the same cause—continuing legal omnipotence—as the subordinate legislature's subordination. The relationship between the courts of law and Parliament is first and foremost a political reality. The relations between a subordinate legislature and the courts which interpret its legislation are governed not merely by political reality but by a superior legal authority to which those courts render a more devoted obedience.
