Reform Act

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/houseofcommons/reformacts/overview/reformact1832/ 

Second Reform Act

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/houseofcommons/reformacts/overview/furtherreformacts/

Selden Society Lecture Lord Eldon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrudsqSTClw 

Jeremy Bentham Project UCL

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/ 

Historical cameo: John Austin 

Born near Ipswich in Suffolk, John Austin (1790–1859) was a lawyer and legal philosopher. He enjoyed brief stints in the army (1807–12) and at the Bar (1818–25). He and his wife, Sarah, were neighbours of prominent philosophers, Jeremy Bentham and the Stuart Mills (James and John). He was a utilitarian like Bentham, his mentor. 

In 1826, he was offered the Chair of Jurisprudence and the Law of Nations at the newly founded University of London (now University College London). Between 1827–8, Austin lived in Bonn, Germany where he attended lectures on Roman law. Between 1829 and 1833, he delivered lectures on jurisprudence at the University of London. The series of lectures he gave he published in The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832). Austin was a terrible lecturer. His jurisprudence lectures were so poorly attended that they were discontinued. He resigned from the University in 1834.  

Austin’s works, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832) and Lectures on Jurisprudence (1862), are treated as the foundation for the legal philosophy known as English legal positivism and analytical jurisprudence.  Law students will learn this in detail in Theories of Law.  ‘Legal positivism’ is the idea that law can be defined without reference to morals.  This does not mean that law has no moral content – Austin recognised that law usually had a moral content.  However, in identifying whether a ‘norm’ or guide to conduct was ‘law’, the criteria used did not have a necessary reference to morals.  In short, according to Austin a norm was identifiable as a law independently of morals.  Whether or not the norm was a law was a different question to whether or not it was a good or bad law.  It could still be a law and be a bad one.  

In his first text, Austin developed the criteria for identifying a law in the command theory of law. Austin defined Positive law or ‘laws properly so called’ to mean commands ‘set by a sovereign person, or a sovereign body of persons, to a member or members of the independent political society wherein that person or body is sovereign or supreme.’  This definition of law has no reference to morals.  Sanction was the means by which obedience to laws was enforced. The source of all laws was the sovereign. Twentieth-century legal scholars have been highly critical of Austin’s work.  Law students will again study this in Theories of Law. 

This theory, also called ‘analytical jurisprudence’, is about identifying what law is, not what law should be.  Philosophies about what law should be are ‘normative jurisprudence’.  As an analytical thinker, Austin was a positivist.  As a normative thinker, he was (like Bentham) a utilitarian. Unlike Bentham’s contempt for the common law, Austin’s position was much more positive. He thought that it was ‘highly beneficial and even absolutely necessary’. 

Historical cameo and constitutional detour: AV Dicey and the rule of law 

Albert Venn Dicey (1835–1922) was an English lawyer, professor of law, and a celebrated constitutional law scholar. Born in Leicestershire, Dicey graduated from Balliol College, Oxford and was called to the Bar in 1863. He enjoyed an illustrious legal career. 

In 1882, he became Vinerian Chair in English Law at Oxford. At the time of Dicey’s appointment, common law was not an established academic discipline in England. In particular, nineteenth century English legal literature was impoverished. Dicey was keen to establish law as a science, which he tried to do by publishing textbooks on public and private law, and by justifying the place of law at universities. Indeed, his inaugural lecture at Oxford had the ambitious title: ‘Can English Law be Taught at the Universities?’ Naturally, he thought it could. 

Dicey was a committed legal positivist committed to the command theory of law (see John Austin, above), and appears to have been influenced by the Pandectists.  Much of this influences his textbook writing.    

While Vinerian Professor, Dicey published An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885). The text is still in print. In this text, he famously offered three meanings for the ‘rule of law’. The ‘rule of law’ — a basic constitutional principle limiting government power — means: 

1. ‘[T]he absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power’

2. ‘[E]quality before the law, or the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land administered by the ordinary law courts’ 

3. ‘[A] formula for expressing the fact that with us the law of the constitution, the rules which in foreign countries naturally form part of a constitutional code, are not the source but the consequence of the rights of individuals, as defined and enforced by the courts; that, in short, the principles of private law have with us been by the action of the courts and Parliament so extended as to determine the position of the Crown and of its servants; thus the constitution is the result of the ordinary law of the land.’ In other words, and in short, the rule of law meant that: 

• The supremacy of government by law over arbitrary rule; 

• Government had to have specific legal authority to act; 

• Individuals could only be punished for a breach of the law. 

In 1896, he became Professor of Law at the London School of Economics. That same year, he published A Digest on the Law of England with reference to the Conflict of Laws; an extended version of The Law of Domicil as a Branch of the Law of England, Stated in the Form of Rules (1879). Dicey’s text on conflict of laws is still in print. Dicey, Morris and Collin’s Conflict of Laws, now in its 15th edition, remains the seminal text on English conflict of laws (or private international law). That is in part due to a celebrated formula by which he conveniently and authoritatively stated the law: rule, comment, and illustration. The tendency of English judges to cite the text as legal authority underlines its reputation..  

Selden Society Lecture the trials of Oscar Wilde

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO8d_eSXI2E 

The Libel Act 1843

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/6-7/96/contents/enacted