Subjects', or 'Citizens of Erewhon'? Law and Non-Law in the Development of a 'British Citizenship

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4525366
AutoresMichelle Everson (autor correspondente)
Ano2003
Volume7
Fascículo1
Páginas57-83
Data de publicação2003-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCitizenship Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1362-1025 • E-ISSN: 1469-3593
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1362102032000048729
OpenAlexW2042734826
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas4

The UK is agog with modernisation. The dissolution of the House of Lords, devolution and a potentially Parliament-trumping Bill of Human Rights; no British political institution appears to be sacrosanct. Nonetheless, as the following paper argues, it as yet unclear whether such modernisation will affect deep-seated historical trends within the British polity; trends which stubbornly survived even the 'constitutional moment' of the post-war creation of a democratic welfare state, and which continue to perceive of the individual Briton's relationship with the British State (that is, British citizenship) in implicitly hierarchical terms. The modern Briton is no 'fellow-traveller' in a state constituted exclusively for its needs by its citizenry. Rather, the 'British subject' retains a feudal flavour, still linked, by simple virtue of common law and the constitutional 'non-definition' of modern British citizenship, to an outmoded monarchical Sovereign. And yet, such antiquinarianism may also bear the seeds of a modernism better suited to a postnational world. If the modern Briton is no citizen, neither is the British State the usual demagogic corporational bulwark against the self-definition of plural and private (non-state-derived) citizenship identities beyond or even within traditional sovereign boundaries. In conceiving of the Briton 'without' the British State, British, or more particularly common law, has perhaps, and however incidentally, provided Europe and its evolving law with a blueprint for the evolution of dynamic rather than dynastic concepts of legal rather than statist citizenship

Citizenship · Constitution · Modernization theory · Parliament · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · European and International Law Studies · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies