From: "John Hurst", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>If a jury can 'nullify' a law, then it can overturn the decisions of
>Parliament. If that's so, then it means a group of 12 *un*-elected
>people can overrule the will of 600-odd *elected* MPs. If I understand
>this correctly, it means that juries are supreme over Acts of Parliament
>and, hence, supreme to Parliament itself? Under common law?
Jonathan,
The people, and their will expressed in centuries of juries
decisions and known as the common law, are the supreme power in the UK. The
divine right of Kings and Parliaments was abolished in the Revolutionary
settlement of 1688/9. This settlement came about when the Bishop of
Salisbury
invoked Chapter 61 of Magna Carta.
The "supremacy of Parliament" is only that no Parliament can bind its
successors. In other words later Parliaments have the power to repeal
Statute law passed by earlier ones.
The authority for this statement is the following maxim of the common law
from Blackstones Commentaries 14th Ed p160;
"Acts derogatory to the power of subsequent Parliaments bind not".
This in turn is quoted in the standard textbook Halsbury's Laws of England
Vol 8 (2) Constitutional Law and Human Rights Para 234). Thus common law
binds Parliament.
The supremacy of the jury is expressed in the old form of giving a prisoner
in charge to a jury which used to commence with the words "Jury, look upon
your prisoner- prisoner, look upon your jury".
This is another example of how knowledge of the historic basis of our
institutions reveals how they have been subverted. And again the principle
of Pepper v. Hart that the legal and historical basis of laws and statutes
must be taken into account is the answer. In order to retain our rights we
must first know what they are.
BTW Pepper v. Hart is now incorporated in Police training manuals, so they
have no excuse anymore <g>.
Regards, John Hurst. www.magnacarta.demon.co.uk
"The facts embodied in Magna Carta and the circumstances giving rise to them
were buried or misunderstood. The underlying idea of the sovereignty of the
law, long existent in feudal custom, was raised by it into a doctrine for
the national State. And when in subsequent ages the State, swollen with its
own authority, has attempted to ride roughshod over the rights or liberties
of the subject it is to this doctrine that appeal has again and again been
made, and never as yet, without success."
Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples (1956) Vol. 1, p
201-202.
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