547. We know that Coke even advanced the claim, in Bonham’s case (1610) 8 Co. Rep 118A that Courts could invalidate acts Parliament if they contravened rules of natural justice such as that a man shall not be heard before he is condemned or that he should be a Judge in his own cause. As Iovr Jennings points out, in an appendix to ‘‘The Law and the Constitution’’ (5th Edn. 1959 p. 318) the theory of Parliamentary sovereignty or supremacy could, by no means, be said to be firmly established in England in Coke’s time. 548. Blackstone, while enunciating the theory of Parliamentary sovereignty in the 19th century, as it was to be later expounded in the 20th century by Prof. A.V. Dicey, also claimed superiority for ‘‘the law of nature which was common to all mankind.’’ He said about this law": ‘‘It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, immediately or immediately, from this original.’’ (See: Dicey – Law of the Constitution p. 62) 549. It is a matter of legal and Constitutional history that English Judges finally rejected claims based upon vague philosophical concepts or upon a law of nature or appeals to the ‘‘yet auguster thing’’ pitted against statutory law except in so far as certain rules of natural justice and reason could impliedly be read into acts of Parliament due to absence of statutory prohibition and the need to observe them having regard to the character of the function required by a statute to be performed. Constitutional historians such as Holdsworth, have pointed out how English Common Lawyers, some presiding as Judges over King’s Courts of Justice, other sitting in Parliament as Legislators, joined hands to evolve, sustain, and give life to principles of ‘‘Sovereignty of Parliament’’ and the ‘‘Rule of Law’’ as understood by them. Dicey asserted, in his ‘‘Law of the Constitution’’, that both these principles so operated as to reinforce each other instead of coming into conflict with each other. One wonders whether this could be said of later times when the need for more rapid transformations of social and economic orders, in an effort to build up a welfare State in Britain, led to serious curtailment of what were at one time considered natural and inviolable rights and to adoption of legislative devices such as Henry VIIIth clause. We know that these developments evoked a powerful protest from a Chief Justice of Englnad, Lord Hewart, who wrote a book on the subject: ‘‘New Despostism.’’ Today, however, it cannot be said that the Courts of justice in England do not see the implications of a welfare Socialistic State which may demand the curtailment of liberties of subjects in many directions in order that the substance of democratic freedom, only attainable through removal of economic, social and educational disparities and barriers, may be attiained. 550. Willis, dealing with the development of Amercian Constitutional Law, wrote about the claim of Coke mentioned above, to invalidate Acts of

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