Sovereign people

Published on 13/07/2012 00:00

Alistair McConnachie (Letters, 11 July) posits a serious opinion suggesting a wholly new principle of sovereignty by ascribing legislatures as having sovereignty over the people.

He should tell those states emerging from decades of autocratic and undemocratic government about his ideas, the stuff of dictatorships.

I quoted Lord Cooper in 
McCormick v the Lord Advocate because it is the best known judgment in Scotland by any Lord President of the Court of Session, Scotland’s highest court, by Scotland’s Chief Judge in 1953.

He held that “parliamentary sovereignty was a purely English principle without a counterpart in Scottish constitutional law”.

Lord Russell was not handing down a judgment; he was expressing an observation.

Those wishing to understand the notion of sovereignty of the people of Scotland, while learning about Scotland’s written constitution, should read books by Scotland’s greatest legalists and constitutional writers: George Buchanan, T B Smith and James Dalrymple.

John J G McGill FSA Scot

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