The old Commonwealth model of constitutionalism

Abstract

Comparative constitutional law is prone to two types of error. ‘Thin’ or overly formal accounts overlook important substantive dimensions of law and constitutions. ‘Thicker’ accounts often subsume the legal within politics or culture. Both types of error share a tendency towards presentism which stems, we argue, from insufficient consideration of the ‘jurisprudential perspective’ – the basic framework of legality which structures constitutional order and the ‘internal point of view’ that accompanies it, whereby actors within a legal order understand their association in terms of rights and duties. We turn to an older school of inquiry to see what such inquiry might entail. ‘Commonwealth comparative constitutional law’ explored questions of legality and sovereignty in the context of a collapsing British Empire. We assess the contribution of R.T.E. Latham, D.V. Cowen, Edward McWhinney and Geoffrey Marshall in the context of the Voters Rights legislation and litigation in 1950s South Africa in particular, and conclude by reflecting on the potential of this style of scholarship in our own era, where questions of sovereignty, exclusion and faux legality resurface in new and troubling forms.