The long slumber of Dicey’s Indian monarch

Swaminathan, Shivprasad (2016) The long slumber of Dicey’s Indian monarch. Commonwealth Law Bulletin, 42 (2). pp. 212-235. ISSN 3050718

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Abstract

AV Dicey treated amending power in written constitutions as an adjunct of sovereignty and he treated the body charged with the power of amending the constitution as the repository of sovereignty in the system – not any different in quality from the paradigm: the British Parliament. Debates of a piece with those surrounding parliamentary sovereignty reincarnate in systems with written constitutions as debates about the amending body’s power to amend the written constitution. This essay examines the points of contiguity between the debates about sovereignty in the unalloyed form they take in the British model and that of amending power in India and the methods of limiting parliamentary omnipotence adopted by the two systems. It will be argued that although for a while the Diceyian notion of parliamentary sovereignty reigned supreme, eventually India embraced a view of implied limitations on amending power qualitatively akin to common law constitutionalism that places implied limits on parliamentary sovereignty.

Item Type: Article
Keywords: Sovereignty | Constitutionalism | Slumber
Subjects: Social Sciences and humanities > Social Sciences > Social Sciences (General)
JGU School/Centre: Jindal Global Law School
Depositing User: Amees Mohammad
Date Deposited: 14 Feb 2022 09:21
Last Modified: 14 Feb 2022 09:24
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050718.2016.1173564
URI: https://pure.jgu.edu.in/id/eprint/1258

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