Nick Jones – Winning Entry
Graham Turnbull essay competition 2019 Has the rule of law been replaced by the rule of politics? Nick Jones – winning entry Introduction Throughout his 2019 Reith Lectures, Jonathan Sumption advanced a case for the re- emergence of the political sphere, as a remedy to a British judicial system which has come to claim a “wider supervisory authority over other organs of the State.”1 Crucially, he placed legitimacy – “a vital but elusive concept […which] is still the basis of all consent”2 – at the very heart of his analysis. It is precisely the democratic legitimacy inherent to politics, he argued, that renders it a more appropriate decision-making vehicle than legal adjudication, particularly in the field of human rights. Whether Lord Sumption is correct on this latter point is not the primary focus of this essay (several substantive critiques have already emerged, including from his former Supreme Court colleague, Baroness Hale).3 However, his notion of legitimacy is absolutely central to conflicts between the “rule of the law” and the “rule of politics”, begging the question: what happens when they collide? This essay will seek to unravel this tension by arguing that the two concepts necessarily co-exist and, increasingly, conflict with one another. Far from being mutually exclusive, these two sources of legitimacy offer competing frames of reference justifying both governance, and the conferral or revocation of rights. Indeed, there is politics, on the one hand, and law, on the other: the key question is discerning which one “rules” when each is claimed as justification for opposing outcomes. Conceptual definitions Although thinkers from all standpoints have lauded the rule of law as a central tenet underpinning the liberal democratic model, a commonly held definition remains elusive.
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