This volume brings together a series of lectures A. V. Dicey first gave at Harvard Law School on the influence of public opinion in England during the nineteenth century and its impact on legislation. It is an accessible attempt by an Edwardian liberal to make sense of recent British history. In our time, it helps define what it means to be an individualist or liberal. Dicey's lectures were a reflection of the anxieties felt by turn-of-the-century Benthamite Liberals in the face of Socialist and New Liberal challenges.
A. V. Dicey (1835-1922) was an English jurist, Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford University, and author of, among other works, "The Law of the Constitution."
Richard VandeWetering is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario.

Originally published in 1897, this is the fifth edition of 'Introduction to the study of the Law of the Constitution' It deals only with two or three guiding principles which pervade the modern constitution of England. The object is to provide students with a manual which may impress these leading principles on there minds, and thus may enable them to study with benefit in Blackstone's Commentaries and other treatises of the like nature those legal topics which, taken together, make up the constitutional law of England........ Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

As Americans we know much about our own constitution. Dicey now gives the reader a chance to learn more about the British constitution. Albert Dicey was a British jurist and constitutional theorist. DIcey was a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford and later became Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford and a leading constitutional scholar of his day. An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution was written in 1885. The principles it expounds are considered part of the uncodified British constitution. Dicey believed that freedom was under attack by modern incursions against the Rule of Law. Dicey writes that the freedom British subjects enjoy depends on the supremacy of Common Law, the sovereignty of Parliament, and the courts remaining impartial without governmental interference.

A starting point for the study of the English Constitution and comparative constitutional law, The Law of the Constitution elucidates the guiding principles of the modern constitution of England: the legislative sovereignty of Parliament, the rule of law, and the binding force of unwritten conventions.