The work of the mid-Victorian jurist, AV Dicey, has had a remarkable influence on British constitutional thought, not least in establishing the orthodox framework within which modern constitutional lawyers continue to work. That legal positivist framework has, however, recently been challenged by jurists advocating what is generally called common law constitutionalism. Accepting the core of sense in Dicey’s account, their objective has been to revise some of the jurisprudential underpinnings of his framework for the purpose of showing that the dominant characteristic of the British system is not sovereignty but legality. Mark Walters now builds on this revisionary work by offering a new historically informed study of Dicey’s Law of the Constitution, which is designed to show that the orthodox interpretation of Dicey as a legal positivist is itself misconceived. Walters argues that, properly understood, Dicey had a more nuanced appreciation of the relationship between sovereignty and legality than is commonly appreciated. This review article examines Walters’s exercise and assesses its contemporary significance.

中文翻译：

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AV Dicey 与普通法立宪主义的形成

维多利亚中期法学家 AV Dicey 的工作对英国宪法思想产生了显着影响，尤其是在建立现代宪法律师继续工作的正统框架方面。然而，这种法律实证主义框架最近受到了倡导通常称为普通法宪政的法学家的挑战。接受戴雪叙述中的核心意义，他们的目标是修改他的框架的一些法学基础，以表明英国制度的主要特征不是主权而是合法性。马克沃尔特斯现在通过提供对戴西宪法法的新的历史资料研究，以这项修订工作为基础，这旨在表明戴雪作为法律实证主义者的正统解释本身是错误的。沃尔特斯认为，如果正确理解，戴雪对主权与合法性之间的关系的理解比人们普遍理解的更为微妙。这篇评论文章检查了沃尔特斯的练习并评估了它的当代意义。