Page 910 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 March 1991
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be utterly void: for when an Act of Parliament is against common right and reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the common law will control it, and adjudge such Act to be void".
Or Coke's confrontation with James I, wherein he risked being beheaded by asserting Bracton's comments that the Common Law protected the King, not that the King protected the Common Law ...
Or Coke's comments during the drafting of the Petition of Right of 1627, wherein he stated "sovereign power is no parliamentary word. In my opinion, it weakens Magna Charta, and all our statutes, for they are absolute, without any saving of sovereign power ... Magna Charta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign."
... ... ...
What is so apparent from reading "The Law of the Constitution" is that Dicey does not support his theory with even one credible piece of authority ... Dicey simply states it as a fact. The "Sovereign Parliament" theory is inconsistent with the history of the English people, inconsistent with the authorities of the English legal theory and logically inconsistent.
Mr Connolly: I raise a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have been restrained so far, but I must ask that question of relevance. We are discussing the Weapons Bill 1991.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes. Could you make your comments relevant to the Weapons Bill of 1991, Mr Stevenson.
MR STEVENSON: The jurisdiction of this Assembly is highly relevant to the Weapons Bill, Mr Deputy Speaker. Schulze continues:
It has been said of this schoolteacher's lessons to vulnerable students that the "Sovereign Parliament" theory is:
A simple theory, for simple minds, that simply doesn't work.
... a more reasonable approach to a "government under law" would be the basic proposition that a stream cannot rise higher than its source. Likewise, with the Sovereign Parliament taking over the position of the former Sovereign, it cannot take over powers that the former Sovereign did not have. As the former Sovereign was required to respect the fundamental rights of the people, so too is the present Sovereign. The present sovereign simply steps into the shoes of the former sovereign in the fundamental documents of the Constitution. It is ... submitted that
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