Rządy prawa i supremacja parlamentu w angielskiej kulturze politycznej i prawnej
The Rule of Law and the Supremacy of Parliament Within English Political and Legal Culture

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents the process of the evolution of the principles of the rule of law and the supremacy of Parliament, both of which are fundamental to the English constitutional system, towards their gradual convergence with the meaning of the continental concept of the law-state (Rech-tsstaat). It shows how the principles can be understood as being two harmonious aspects of the English constitutional system, and came to be understood as an expression of two (i.e. legal and political) opposing components of the modern state. The paper focuses on two aspects of this process. The first aspect shows the evolution from the original understanding of the principle of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ as the most important guarantee of the integrity of common law and the universality of its jurisdiction (and thus affirmed the principle of the rule of law), to its opposite, i.e. the basis for the practical disintegration in the 19th and 20th centuries of common law by means of the creation of a huge amount of statutory law that was expressly exempt from the jurisdiction of the common law courts. The second aspect shows the process of the creation of English administrative law. It starts with the explanation of the initial rejection of the very concept of administrative law as being distinct from private (common) law and thus contrary to the rule of the (common) law principle, to its final acceptance at the end of the 20th century as an urgent requirement of the rule of law principle. The paper ends with an account of the way in which the English judiciary created a distinct administrative jurisdiction that upheld the formal unity of the common law, through the creation of a separate Administrative Court within the system of the common law courts.

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