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The Promise of Legality: Critical Reflections on the Work of TRS Allan

The Promise of Legality: Critical Reflections on the Work of TRS Allan

Author: Genevieve Cartier; Mark D. Walters
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781509970957
Published In: June 2025
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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This book assembles critical contributions on the work of TRS Allan, the Professor Emeritus of Jurisprudence and Public Law at the University of Cambridge, whose leading work in legal and constitutional theory spans almost 45 years.

Allan has charted a distinctive path for legal, political, and moral theory and practice and has become a highly significant figure in the UK and in common law/parliamentary systems around the world. His ideas challenge established opinions about constitutional law within these systems as well as established views about the rule of law from more abstract or philosophical perspectives. Allan claims that law and morality find an inherent connection through the rule of law. He argues that there is a connection that flourishes in common law jurisdictions because although Parliament has sovereign legislative powers, its laws gain their full legal meaning only through an interpretive lens. This lens seeks to reconcile sovereign will with legality's basic moral ideals, especially the idea that law must be general and capable of guiding behaviour and thus respectful of the equality and dignity of its subjects. Allan's scholarship is powerful yet controversial, and it has inspired 20 leading scholars from the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to engage with the central themes of his work.

By doing so, the contributors help to make that work accessible to a new generation of scholars and students. They also provide a timely framework for engaging in the most important challenges facing our democracies today: how our legal systems do, or do not, honour and respect democracy and therefore legislative sovereignty while at the same time honouring and respecting the rule of law, or the "Promise of Legality".

Introduction, Genevieve Cartier (University of Sherbrooke, Canada) and Mark D Walters (Queen's University, Canada)

Part I: Allan, Dworkin, Dicey

1. T.R.S. Allan and the Common Law Tradition, Peter Cane (University of Cambridge, UK) 2. More Protestant than Luther or Dworkin? T.R.S. Allan on Law and Morals, David Dyzenhaus (University of Toronto, Canada) 3. Mark Walters on Dicey, Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Rule of Law, Jeffrey Goldsworthy (Monash University, Australia) 4. Legality and Integrity: This is How We Choose to Do Things Around Here, Stuart Lakin (University of Reading, UK) 5. T.R.S. Allan, 'Unwritten Constitutional Principles', and Judicial Review of Legislation, Han-Ru Zhou (University of Montreal, Canada)

Part II: Law, Morality and Justice

6. The Rule of Law and Respect for Persons, Thomas Adams (University of Oxford, UK) 7. Outsiders and Trevor Allan's Rule of Law, Evan Fox-Decent (McGill University, Canada) 8. The Rule of Law Without Law, Hillary Nye (University of Alberta, Canada) 9. Against Juridicalization of Political Philosophy: Equality, Morality, and the Rule of Law, Christine Sypnowich (Queen's University, Canada) 10. The Essence of Rights and the Limits of Proportionality, Jacob Weinrib (Queen's University, Canada)

Part III: Common Law Constitutionalism and Parliamentary Sovereignty

11. Rights, Reason and Review, Paul Craig (University of Oxford, UK) 12. Common Law and the Common Good, Michael Foran (University of Glasgow, UK) 13. Persons, not Citizens, Joanna Langille (University of Western Ontario, Canada) 14. What's Good about Parliamentary Sovereignty? George Letsas (University College London, UK) 15. Constitutional Balance and the Common Law Constitution, Alison Young (University of Cambridge, UK)

Part IV: Allan on Administrative Law and the Administrative State

16. Reasons to Give Reasons, Hasan Dindjer (University of Oxford, UK) 17. Administrative Law from an Internal Perspective, Matthew Lewans (University of Alberta, Canada) 18. The Public Service, Democracy and the Rule of Law, Janet McLean (University of Auckland, New Zealand) 19. A Defence of Administrative Law Doctrine, Paul Daly (University of Ottawa, Canada) 20. Is T.R.S. Allan Really that Popular? Sovereignty, Democracy and the Rule of Law, Richard Stacey (University of Toronto, Canada) A Response, Trevor Allan (University of Cambridge, UK)