author
A. V. (Albert Venn) Dicey
1835–1922
Best known for shaping how people talk about parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law, this influential British jurist wrote one of the classic books on the British constitution. His work still echoes through legal and political debate well over a century later.
2 Audiobooks
A Leap in the Dark A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the Bill of 1893
by A. V. (Albert Venn) Dicey
England's Case Against Home Rule
by A. V. (Albert Venn) Dicey
About the author
Born on February 4, 1835, near Lutterworth in Leicestershire, Albert Venn Dicey became one of the most important legal thinkers of modern Britain. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, and went on to build his career in legal scholarship rather than courtroom fame.
Dicey is most widely remembered for Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885), a book that helped define popular understanding of parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law in Britain. He later served as Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, and his writing on constitutional law, legal method, and politics made him a major public intellectual of his day.
He died in Oxford on April 7, 1922. Although some of his political views now feel very much of their time, his influence on constitutional thought has lasted, and his name still appears regularly in discussions of British public law.