DICEY WAS NOT DICEYAN

Abstract

There is an apparent paradox between Dicey's treatment of parliamentary sovereignty as the central premise of the British constitution and his advocacy of the referendum, a tool of popular sovereignty. Bogdanor wrote: [i]t is paradoxical that Dicey should have been the first to advocate the referendum in Britain, for he was the author of the classic work Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885). Foremost among the principles there identified as central to the British Constitution was the sovereignty of Parliament—a principle generally held to preclude the referendum. Cosgrove, who wrote an authoritative biography on Dicey, explained that Dicey turned to the referendum in his search for a device that would prevent Home Rule. Dicey's commitment to defeat Home Rule, he wrote, distorted his judgment.