This article considers the important but neglected contribution of James Bryce (1838–1922)—noted historian, Gladstonian statesman, and ambassador to the US—to the constitutional debates over Home Rule for Ireland in late Victorian Britain. It focuses on Bryce's reflections on the nature of sovereignty and constitutional government provoked by the need to reconcile Home Rule with parliamentary sovereignty, recently canonized by Bryce's Unionist counterpart and friend, A. V. Dicey. Challenging a tradition of scholarship that sees the Home Rule debates as “a sideshow” and Bryce's contribution as “illogical,” I suggest that Bryce's contribution in fact represents an innovative imperial constitutionalism of what may be called “soft” federalism, which rests not on a codified constitution enforced by courts but on a paradoxical understanding of Parliament's de facto sovereignty as constrained by moral commitments. In this light, the jurisprudential debates appear less a sideshow than an important part of the political contest itself.

本文考虑詹姆斯布莱斯（1838-1922 年）——著名的历史学家、格莱斯顿政治家和驻美国大使——对维多利亚时代晚期英国关于爱尔兰自治的宪法辩论的重要但被忽视的贡献。它着重于布莱斯对主权和宪政性质的反思，这些思考是由需要调和自治与议会主权引起的，最近被布莱斯的工会党和朋友 AV Dicey 册封。挑战将地方自治辩论视为“杂耍”而将布莱斯的贡献视为“不合逻辑”的学术传统，我认为布莱斯的贡献实际上代表了一种创新的帝国宪政主义，即所谓的“软”联邦主义，受道德承诺约束的事实上的主权。从这个角度来看，法理辩论与其说是一场杂耍，不如说是政治竞赛本身的重要组成部分。