Why Albert Venn Dicey is important to the ideals of freedom: Albert Venn Dicey argued brilliantly for the impartiality of the courts and the Rule of Law. He held that the law is there for all to obey and that no one, not even those in the highest reaches of government, is exempt from obeying the law.
"... every official, from the Prime Minister down to a constable or a collector of taxes, is under the same responsibility for every act done without legal justification as any other citizen. The Reports abound with cases in which officials have been brought before the courts, and made, in their personal capacity, liable to punishment, or to the payment of damages, for acts done in their official character but in excess of their lawful authority. [Appointed government officials and politicians, alike] ... and all subordinates, though carrying out the commands of their official superiors, are as responsible for any act which the law does not authorise as is any private and unofficial person." - Albert Venn Dicey
nglish jurist and Professor of Common Law at Oxford, Albert Venn Dicey was the leading constitutional scholar of his day. In his 1885 seminal work, The Law of the Constitution, Dicey warned that freedom was under attack by modern incursions against the Rule of Law. He understood that the freedom British subjects enjoyed was dependent on the sovereignty of Parliament, the impartiality of the courts free from governmental interference and the supremacy of common law.