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Raffield, Paul (2015) Ancient constitution. In: The Encyclopedia of Political Thought. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 90-91.
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Official URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118...
Abstract
The ancient constitution was a fictive corpus of fundamental British laws, of immemorial origin, the legitimate authority of which superseded that of the sovereign magistrate. In a jurisdiction the rights of whose subjects were not codified in the form of a single written document, the relationship between governor and governed was regulated by reference to unwritten law. The political importance of the ancient constitution climaxed in the seventeenth century, as common lawyers and parliamentarians sought to restrain the absolutist tendencies of the crown; although its historiographical origins are traceable at least to the late fifteenth century and the political theory espoused by Sir John Fortescue, chief justice in the reign of Henry VI. The constitutional theories of Fortescue derived partly from the ancient (and largely mythical) foundations of Britain's mode of governance in classical antiquity, as related by Geoffrey of Monmouth in The History of the Kings of Britain (ca. 1136).
Item Type: | Book Item | ||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain | ||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Constitutional history -- Great Britain, Customary law | ||||
Publisher: | Blackwell | ||||
Place of Publication: | Oxford | ||||
Book Title: | The Encyclopedia of Political Thought | ||||
Official Date: | 15 September 2015 | ||||
Dates: |
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Page Range: | pp. 90-91 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||
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