Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Indeterminate sovereignty and the rule of law: A descriptive analysis of changes to parliament’s use of language

  • Original Article
  • Published:
British Politics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Judges increasingly alter or veto government decisions. The aim is to explain this ‘judicialization’ of British politics. Existing theories focus on what the judges’ want for themselves, or they focus on changes to social attitudes. But a key variable, often omitted in research, is the law itself. If the meaning of law is increasingly difficult to determine we should expect a greater role for adjudication in politics. A descriptive time series analysis of 8278 sections of primary and secondary legislation between 1920 and 2010 demonstrates a significant increase in indeterminate language used by Parliament to communicate with government and the courts. This includes policy spaces with high judicialization: immigration, homelessness and anti-discrimination.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The adjective ‘British’ will be used unless one of the three legal systems in the United Kingdom is specifically referred to.

  2. All data were taken from the annual judicial statistics issued in print and online by the Ministry of Justice and its predecessor departments.

  3. R v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs ex parte World Development Movement Ltd [1995]1 ALL ER 611.

  4. A and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] UKHL 56.

  5. R (on the application of GG and others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] All ER (D) 143.

  6. Cadder v HM Advocate [2010] UKSC 43.

  7. The complete data set is available from the author on request. From here, ‘anti-discrimination’ will be used to refer to both anti-discrimination and equality legislation.

  8. The sources for this data were (i) 1900–1925, The Public General Acts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (London: George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode), (ii) 1926–1972, The Public General Acts and the Church Assembly Measures (London: Council of Law Reporting), and (iii) 1973–2010, The Public General Acts and Church Assembly Measures (London: Parliamentary Law Reports).

  9. R v London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, ex parte M and ors, The Times 18 October 1996.

  10. Notably s 189(2) of the Housing Act 1996.

  11. s 177 of the Housing Act 1996, as amended by s 10 of the Homelessness Act 2002.

  12. [2011] UKSC 3 SC.

  13. See, for instance, Refuge (2009) About Domestic Violence http://refuge.org.uk/your-questions/about-domestic-violence/#q33, accessed 20 December 2011.

  14. [2009] EWCA Civ 626; [2009] UKSC 15.

  15. See the European Court of Human Rights case of Gorzelik and Ors v Poland, Application No. 44158/98.

References

  • Bennion, F. (2008) On Statutory Interpretation: A Code, 5th edn. London: LexisNexis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennion, F. (2009) Understanding Common Law Legislation: Drafting and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bingham, T. (2010) The Rule of Law. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bogdanor, V. (2009) The New British Constitution. Oxford: Hart.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butt, P. and Castle, R. (2007) Modern Legal Drafting: A Guide to Using Clearer Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collier, R. and Collier, D. (2002) Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cross, R., Bell, J. and Engle, G. (1995) Cross: Statutory Interpretation. London: LexisNexis Butterworths.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crystal, D. (2004) Making Sense of Grammar. Harlow: Pearson Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crystal, D. and Davy, D. (1969) Investigating English Style: English Language Series. Harlow: Longmans.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahl, R. (1957) Decision-making in a democracy: The supreme court as a national policy-maker. Journal of Public Law 6 (3): 279–295.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dickson, B. (2007) Judicial Activism in Common Law Supreme Courts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, H. (1984) Public misperceptions concerning the politics of judging: Dispelling some myths about the DC circuit. University of Colorado Law Review 56 (4): 619–646.

    Google Scholar 

  • Endicott, T. (2011) The value of vagueness. In: A. Marmor and S. Soames (eds.) Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 14–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Epp, C. (1998) The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, D. and O’Halloran, S. (1999) Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach To Policy-Making Under Separate Powers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Evans, M., McIntosh, W., Lin, J. and Cates, C. (2007) Recounting the courts? Applying automated content analysis to enhance empirical legal research. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 4 (4): 1007–1039.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foster, C.D. (2005) British Government in Crisis, Or, The Third English Revolution. Oxford: Hart Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foyer, J. (1982) Proceeding of the national assembly, 21 June, http://archives.assemblee-nationale.fr/7/cri/1981-1982-ordinaire2/115.pdf, accessed 16 January 2013.

  • Garrett, G., Keleman, R. and Schulz, H. (1998) The European court of justice, national governments, and legal integration in the European Union. International Organization 52 (1): 149–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gearey, A., Morrison, W. and Jago, R. (2013) The Politics of the Common Law: Perspectives, Rights, Processes, Institutions, 2nd edition. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, J. (2008) Judicial institutions. In: B. Rockman, S. Binder and R. Rhodes (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Institution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 514–534.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, J., Caldeira, G. and Baird, V. (1998) On the legitimacy of national high courts. American Political Science Review 92 (2): 343–358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gillman, H. (2002) How political parties can use the courts to advance their agendas: Federal courts in the United States, 1875–1891. American Political Science Review 96 (3): 511–524.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griffith, J. (1977) The Politics of the Judiciary. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gustafsson, M. (1975) Some Syntactic Properties of English Law Language. Turku, Finland: University of Turku.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hart, H. (1961) The Concept of the Law. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heward, E. (1990) Lord Denning: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hewart, G. (1929) The New Despotism. London: Ernest Benn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirschl, R. (2004) Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huber, J. and Shipan, C. (2002) Deliberate Discretion? The Institutional Foundations of Bureaucratic Autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • King, A. (1975) Overload: Problems of governing in the 1970s. Political Studies 23 (2): 284–296.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klarman, M. (1996) Rethinking the civil rights and civil liberties revolutions. Virginia Law Review 82 (1): 1–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krippendorff, K. (1980) Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. London: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laver, M., Benoit, K. and Garry, J. (2003) Extracting policy positions from political texts using words as data. American Political Science Review 97 (2): 311–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Le Sueur, A. (2004) Developing mechanisms for judicial accountability in the UK. Legal Studies 24 (1): 73–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levi, E. (1948) An introduction to legal reasoning. The University of Chicago Law Review 15 (3): 501–574.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacCormick, N. (2005) Rhetoric and the Rule of Law: A Theory of Legal Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • March, J. and Olsen, J. (1989) Rediscovering Institutions: The Organisational Basis of Politics. New York: The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marmor, A. and Soames, S. (2011) Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Merryman, J. (1981) On the convergence (and divergence) of the civil law and the common law. Stanford Journal of International Law 17 (2): 357–388.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morris, C. (1946) Signs, Language, and Behaviour. New York: G. Braziller.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicol, D. (2001) EC Membership and the Judicialization of British Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, D. (1998) Judicial Discretion in the House of Lords. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, D. (2010) The Judge as Political Theorist: Contemporary Constitutional Review. Oxford: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schelling, T. (1978) Micromotives and Macrobehaviour. London: W W Norton & Co..

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, V. (2008) Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse. Annual Review of Political Science 11 (1): 303–326.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, V. (2010) Taking ideas and discourse seriously: Explaining change through discursive institutionalism as the fourth ‘new institutionalism’. European Political Science Review 2 (1): 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Segal, J. and Spaeth, H. (2002) The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shapiro, M. (1964) Law and Politics in the Supreme Court: New Approaches to Political Jurisprudence. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevens, R. (2005) The English Judges: Their Role in the Changing Constitution. Oxford: Hart Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone Sweet, A. (2000) Governing With Judges: Constitutional Politics in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sunkin, M. (1994) Judialization of politics in the United Kingdom. International Political Science Review 15 (2): 125–133.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tate, C. and Vallinder, T. (1995) The Global Expansion of Judicial Power. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trosborg, A. (1997) Rhetorical Strategies in Legal Language: Discourse Analysis of Statutes and Contracts. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to all those who have read and commented on this piece. Special thanks must go to David Robertson and the editors and reviewers of this journal.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics and International Relations, Wadham College, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX1 3PN, UK

    Matthew Williams

Authors
  1. Matthew Williams
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Williams, M. Indeterminate sovereignty and the rule of law: A descriptive analysis of changes to parliament’s use of language. Br Polit 11, 26–48 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2014.28

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2014.28

Keywords

Search

Navigation