Professor Joseph Raz notes that, in 1959, the International Congress of Jurists came up with a definition of the Rule of Law which effectively made it shorthand for ‘a complete social philosophy’, prescribing a full panoply of civil, political, economic and social rights. The most influential, though also one of the most controversial, expositions of the importance of the Rule of Law in the British constitutional scheme has been that put forward by Dicey. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 for the first time gave explicit statutory recognition to the Rule of Law as a constitutional principle. Historically, constitutional lawyers in this country have prided themselves on the UK's adherence to the Rule of Law, as upheld by the judges in a number of famous cases. The constitutional principle of the separation of powers requires the courts to resist encroachment on the territory for which they are responsible.