Sir William Ivor Jennings: A Centennial Paper
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2004.00509.x |
| Author | A. W. Bradley |
| Published date | 01 September 2004 |
| Date | 01 September 2004 |
SirW|lliam Ivor Jennings: ACentennial Paper
A.W. Bradley
n
As a result of Dr Jennings’ work, there is a code available for Prime Mini sters and
Ministers, the Crown and the people ^ averitable treasury forconstitutional law-
yers and political scientists. (Herman Finer,The Listener, review of Cabinet Govern-
ment, 2 December 1936)
This book takes its place at once as the standard and indispensable work on thesub -
ject; it has indeed bee n done with a thoroughness so complete, and a distinction so
admirable, that it has the ¢eld to itself . . . It has about it whatW|lliam James called
‘the pungent sense of e¡ective reality’. (Harold Laski, New Statesman, review of
CabinetGovernment,5 December1936)
It is amusing that the appearanceof this extremely useful book should coincide with
the abdication crisis. The forcible substitution of Edward VIII by his brother . . .
showed us Cabinet Dictatorship in Action . . . All Communists, workers and trade
unionists can learn a lot from Cabinet Government. Its price is prohibitive, but all
public libraries will have copies. (Daily Worker, review of Cabinet Government,
6 January 1937)
500 million people are today submitting to British rule. This immense and varied
population is governed with reasonable ease. Dr Jennings shows how it is done.
(NewYor kT|mes, review of Cabinet Government,13 June1937)
. . . a brilliant and incisive capacity fordetailed research, synthesized into what will
remain a de¢nitive digest of parliamentary practice under Cabinet leadership .. .
(AmericanBarAssociationJournal,review of Cabinet Government, September1937)
Sir Ivor Jennings makes it clear that he writes as a constitutional lawyer, not as a
historian. His concern is to discover what parts of British experience are relevant
in modern conditions, not to trace in detachment how these modern conditions
have been arrived at . . . Party is a mysterious subject, and deserves all the three
volumes which [he] is devoting to it. (A. J. P. Taylor, TLS, review of Party Politics:
vol1, Appeal to the People,14 October1960)
n
Institute of European andComparative Law, University of Oxford. Emeritus Professor of Constitu-
tional Law, University of Edinburgh.My thanks for their assistance are due in particular to Mrs Claire
Dewing and the sta¡ of the Library, Institute of Commonwealth Studies; also to the following:
A.T. Alwis (University of Peredeniya Library), Charles Arnold-Baker, Geo¡rey Best, Anne Bradley
(Bristol GS), C. P. Brand, Neville Brown, the late W|lliam Cochran, the late Sir W|lliam Dale, Alex
Danchev, Keith Ewing, John Gri⁄th, Geo¡rey Harcourt, Chris Himsworth, Peter Hunt,
J. A. Jolowicz, Gareth Jones, J. C. Laidlaw, Andrew Le Sueur, Martin Loughlin, the late Geo¡rey
Marshall, Vanya Murray, John Nurser and Geo¡rey W|lson. I must al so thank the British Academy
for having suggested that I should write about Jennings. I bear sole responsibility for all errors and
omissions.
rThe Modern LawReview Limited 2004
Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
(2004) 67(5) MLR 716^733
The volumegives the impression that Sir IvorJenni ngs had no clear pictureof what
he intended to do when he set out to write it . . . In the last resort political ideas are
more importantthan money,organization or leadership. Perhaps, therefore, Sir Ivor
Jennings will escape from his present gloom about the future of parties when he
comes to consider political ideas in his third volume. (A. J. P. Taylor,TLS, review
of Party Politics: vol 2,The Growth of Parties,3 February1961)
This third volume has now appeared. It is a great disappointment .. . Sir Ivor Jen-
nings has never claimed to be an historian. He is a constitutional lawyer who takes
his history from the booksof others. . . He is a political sceptic,doubting the reality
of the great issues overwhich men have fought. . . Sir Ivoralways knows better than
the men of the past: they were wasting their time in sham ¢ghts, and blundering
even in their tactics . . . Aftera l ifetime spe nt i n studying the hi story of the British
constitution, Sir Ivor Jennings reaches the despairing conclusion:‘Whate’er is best
administered is best’.He promised to show us that ideas werethe stu¡ of politics. He
reduces them to stu¡a nd nonsense. (A.J. P. Taylor,TLS,review of Party Politics:vol 3,
The Stu¡ of Politics, 26 January 1962)
It is much easier to drawa formal constitution putting into wordsthe outline of the
Westminstermodel than it is to create the environment and the complexof personal
relationships which makethe Westmi nster modelwork. Indeed, it is to be expected
that where democratic government works well it will work with a di¡erent set of
political conventions from those observed in Westminster. . .Variations from the
Westminstermodel must be expected; what one hopes is thatthey will be variations
which do not infri nge fundamental principles . . . Where‘judicial review’ does exist
in the United States and the Commonwealth it is particularly e¡ective because the
Constitution and the common law speak the same language and in large measure
have a common conte nt. (I. Jennings, Magna Carta and its In£uence in theWorldToday
196 5, 35, 3 6, 43 )
INTRODUCTION
If there is a modest hall of fame reserved for writers on law and the British con-
stitution during the last 150 years, there can be no doubt that Sir Ivor Jennings
occupies one of the more exalted places by reason of the originality of his work
during the1930sand the in£uence that this has had on succeeding public lawyers.
1
In 1992, Ferdinand Mount opened his book The British Constitution Now with the
re£ection that: ‘The last book which attempted with any distinction to argue its
way through the morass engul¢ng the law and the Constitution’ was Jennings’
The Law and the Constitution, ¢rst published in 1933. Yet Mount’s appraisal of
Jennings (whom he grouped with Bagehot and Dicey as ‘the three simpli¢ers’)
was not clear-cut. On the one hand,‘[I]t is, above all, the £uidity, the incessant
1 A separatepaper would be required to explorethi s fully, but the in£ue nceof Jennings is evident in,
for instance, the workof J. A. G. Gri⁄th, the red light/gree n lighta nalysis of publiclaw made by
C. Harlow and R. Rawlings, Law and Administration (London: Butterworths, 2
nd
ed, 1997) chs 2
and 3, and the identi¢cation of the normativist and functionalist styles in public law made in
M. Loughlin, Public Law and Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). See further
A.Tomkins,‘‘‘Talk ing in Fictions’’: Jennings on Parliament’ in this issue,772 below.
A.W. Bradley
717rThe Modern LawReview Limited 2004
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