Interesting account, Conor. As I understand it, a division between positivist and natural law thinking about law is whether values such as the rule of law should be seen as external to the concept of law or internal to the concept of law. Those judges who considered rule of law as intrinsic to the constitution seem to me to be half way between those two positions. They're not quite saying it's intrinsic to law in general but their pointing to the constitution in general with several illustrative provisions (rather than one particular provision) is at least highly suggestive that they think the rule of law is intrinsic to law. Oran Doyle
Cheers Oran. I think this is a fair read of where the judges are at. I think what also really motivated them was to find any way of rejecting the concept of Democracy also ipso facto entailed a bundle of rule of law precepts…
Why should a national Constitution be considered a valid basis of Law? Long long time ago, the majority may have voted to approve the Constitution, against a consenting minority, but why should this social compact of those other people be binding on anyone who did not vote for the Constitution and did not agree to the terms on which the compact was made?
Interesting account, Conor. As I understand it, a division between positivist and natural law thinking about law is whether values such as the rule of law should be seen as external to the concept of law or internal to the concept of law. Those judges who considered rule of law as intrinsic to the constitution seem to me to be half way between those two positions. They're not quite saying it's intrinsic to law in general but their pointing to the constitution in general with several illustrative provisions (rather than one particular provision) is at least highly suggestive that they think the rule of law is intrinsic to law. Oran Doyle
Cheers Oran. I think this is a fair read of where the judges are at. I think what also really motivated them was to find any way of rejecting the concept of Democracy also ipso facto entailed a bundle of rule of law precepts…
A win for fullerism — as well
Why should a national Constitution be considered a valid basis of Law? Long long time ago, the majority may have voted to approve the Constitution, against a consenting minority, but why should this social compact of those other people be binding on anyone who did not vote for the Constitution and did not agree to the terms on which the compact was made?