The Oxford Edition of Dicey

The Oxford Edition of Dicey provides sources with which to reassess the extraordinary authority and lasting influence of Dicey's canonical text Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. The first volume consists of Dicey's rare first edition in its original form and of the main addenda in later editions. It facilitates a historical understanding of Dicey's original text in its context and of later changes when they were made. In introducing the first volume, J.W.F. Allison reassesses The Law of the Constitution's authority and the kinds of response it has elicited in view of its original educative form and educational context. The volume also includes Dicey's unpublished inaugural lecture and his revisionist article published in 1915 examining the development of administrative law in England.

Volume Two, The Comparative Study of Constitutions, provides a complement to Dicey's The Law of the Constitution. These largely unpublished comparative constitutional lectures were written for different versions of a comparative constitutional book that Dicey began but did not finish prior to his death in 1922. The lectures were a pioneering venture into comparative constitutionalism and reveal an approach to legal education broader than Dicey is widely understood to have taken. Topics discussed include English, French, American, and Prussian constitutionalism; the separation of powers; representative government; and federalism. The volume begins with an editorial introduction examining the implications of these comparative lectures and Dicey's early foray into comparative constitutionalism for his general constitutional thought, and the kinds of response it has elicited.

These two volumes collect together the main body of work from one of the most influential constitutional law theorists in the field. It is essential reading for any student of English and comparative constitutional thought.

A.V. Dicey, former Vinerian Professor of English Law, University of Oxford (1882-1909)

Albert Venn Dicey (1835-1922) was Vinerian Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and the pre-eminent constitutional lawyer of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution ran to eight editions in his lifetime and remains one of the canonical texts in the history of English constitutional law.

John Allison is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge. He previously taught at the Universities of Chicago, London, and Cape Town and is the author of two books, A Continental Distinction in the Common Law: A Historical and Comparative Perspective on English Public Law (OUP 1996) and The English Historical Constitution: Continuity, Change and European Effects (CUP 2007).