Abstract

The article begins by examining the beliefs about the English nation which informed the elevation of English law to a central position in the political thought of Dicey's time. Second, it identifies similar cultural ideals in the work of some influential political thinkers in Britain in the twentieth century, particularly Ernest Barker and Michael Oakeshott. In this way the article explores the various sympathies and antipathies which amplified a conception of the political world in England as vitally related to the fabric of English law and only comprehensible through the categories of the latter