Our Republican Constitution

Adam Tomkins

feb 2005 · Bloomsbury Publishing

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This new book by Adam Tomkins sets out a radical vision of the British constitution. It argues that despite its outwardly monarchic form the constitution is profoundly informed, and indeed shaped, by values and practices of republicanism. The republican reading of the constitution presented in this book places political accountability at the core of the constitutional order. As such, Our Republican Constitution offers a powerful rejoinder to the current trend in legal scholarship that sees the common law and the courts, rather than Parliament, as the central players in holding government to account. The book further contends that while the constitution should be understood as having republican foundations, current constitutional practice is, in a number of respects, insufficiently republican in character. The book closes by outlining a programme of republican constitutional reform that is designed to secure genuinely responsible government.

This is an original and provocative reinterpretation of the central themes of the British constitution, drawing on constitutional history (especially of the seventeenth century), political theory and public law.

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Adam Tomkins is the John Millar Professor of Public Law at the University of Glasgow.