Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).pdf/18

2 ment. Such ideas led them further still—almost to the conclusion that the interpretation of their constitution was of necessity a judicial function belonging to the courts.

So defined, the Leveller movement has more than antiquarian interest. The fact that such a thing as the Leveller party existed, and professed constitutional ideas and methods similar to those developed in American constitutional history is more than an interesting coincidence. In truth it reveals at a critical point in the development of English political institutions a trend toward the supremacy, not of government, nor of a branch of government, but of law.

Historians, it is true, have assigned the idea of the supremacy of law an important position in the earlier stages of the Puritan Revolution. They have quoted Coke’s saying of 1628, “Sovereign Power is no Parliamentary word; Magna Charta is such a Fellow that he will have no Sovereign,” and they have assigned due significance to the fact that in the Petition of Right Parliament defined the ancient statutes of the realm as a law paramount to the prerogative. On the other hand they have recognized the fact that the indirect consequence of 1640, 1660, and 1688 has been to make Parliament sovereign over the law. “We have,” wrote Professor Maitland, “no irrepealable laws; all laws may be repealed by the ordinary legislature, even the conditions upon which the English and Scottish parliaments