Book contents
- The War against Law
- The War Against Law
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The New Constitutional Lobbyists
- 2 Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Rule of Law
- 3 A Tale of a Parallel Universe
- 4 Heresy vs Heresy: Debating the Rule of Law
- 5 Sovereignty, International Law, the Rule of Law
- 6 The Political Theology of the Parallel Universe
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The New Constitutional Lobbyists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2026
Book contents
- The War against Law
- The War Against Law
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The New Constitutional Lobbyists
- 2 Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Rule of Law
- 3 A Tale of a Parallel Universe
- 4 Heresy vs Heresy: Debating the Rule of Law
- 5 Sovereignty, International Law, the Rule of Law
- 6 The Political Theology of the Parallel Universe
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter reintroduces the ‘common good lawyers’ who are the principal figures in the Judicial Power Project, John Finnis and Richard Ekins, as well as the think tank that hosts the project, Policy Exchange, and sketches how that project has operated in conjunction with Conservative governments to undermine international law and the rule of law. That project operates in turn in conjunction with the Common Good Project, an alliance between right-wing academics across the Atlantic, and prominent figures in it are deeply connected to far-right intellectuals and politicians in Eastern Europe. The chapter closes with an exploration of the resonances between the ideology of the people involved in these projects and the authoritarian political and legal theorists of the Weimar period, Carl Schmitt and Eric Voegelin, in that their understandings of the common good are mostly negative: anything-but-liberalism.
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- The War against LawWhat's Wrong with Common Good Constitutionalism, pp. 13 - 42Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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