ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Professor Martin Loughlin

Professor Martin Loughlin

Professor of Law, Emeritus Professor of Public Law

ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law School

Telephone
020-7849-4642
Room No
Cheng Kin Ku Building 7.12
Languages
English
Key Expertise
Public law

About me

Martin Loughlin is Professor of Law, Emeritus Professor of Public Law. He was educated at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, the University of Warwick and Harvard Law School and held chairs at the Universities of Glasgow and Manchester before returning to ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ in 2000. He was a member of the Editorial Committee of The Modern Law Review from 1987 to 2010, serving as General Editor between 2002-07, and now sits on its Advisory Board. Martin was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2011 and in 2015 was awarded an honorary LL.D. by the University of Edinburgh. He has held research fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2007-8), Princeton University (20012-13), Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (2016-17), Edinburgh Law School (2019) and Yale Law School (2023) and been a Visiting Professor at several law schools including Osgoode Hall, Paris II, Pennsylvania, Renmin University (Beijing), and Toronto. 

Administrative support: Law.Reception@lse.ac.uk

Complete list of publications (pdf)

Research interests

Martin is currently working on a project about the rule of law and is writing a short book on Political Jurisprudence for the Elgar Advanced Introductions series.

Books

The British Constitution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn 2023) 

 


 

Against Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press, 2022)

A critical analysis of the transformation of constitutionalism from an increasingly irrelevant theory of limited government into the most influential philosophy of governance in the world today.

 


 

Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2021), edited by Martin Loughlin and Jens Meierhenrich 

The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law introduces students, scholars, and practitioners to the theory and history of the rule of law, one of the most frequently invoked-and least understood-ideas of legal and political thought and policy practice. It offers a comprehensive re-assessment by leading scholars of one of the world's most cherished traditions. This high-profile collection provides the first global and interdisciplinary account of the histories, moralities, pathologies and trajectories of the rule of law. Unique in conception, and critical in its approach, it evaluates, breaks down, and subverts conventional wisdom about the rule of law for the twenty-first century.

 


 

Political Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press, 2017)

Political jurisprudence is the branch of jurisprudence that treats law as an aspect of human experience called 'the political'. This is an approach that many contemporary jurists, those whose work presupposes the autonomy of legal order, tend to suppress. In this book, Martin Loughlin assesses the contribution made by political jurists and explains its contemporary significance. Political jurists maintain that the essential characteristics of modern legal order can only be revealed by considering how political authority is constituted. The political is orientated to the fact that people are organized into territorially-bounded units within which authoritative governing arrangements have been established, but the authority of this way of viewing the world is strengthened only through institution-building. Law may be an aspect of the political, but to perform its authority-generating functions effectively it must operate relatively autonomously. The political and the legal operate relationally, without one being reduced to the other. Loughlin introduces the rich literature of political jurisprudence through essays on innovative political jurists such as Hobbes, Burke, Constant, Romano, and Schmitt, and on such central themes as political right, institutionalism, constitutional legality, and reason of state. Building on his earlier books, The Idea of Public Law (OUP 2003) and Foundations of Public Law (OUP 2010), this collection extends his account of this influential strand of European legal thought.


 

The British Constitution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013)

The British constitution is regarded as unique among the constitutions of the world. What are the main characteristics of Britain's peculiar constitutional arrangements? How has the British constitution altered in response to the changing nature of its state - from England, to Britain, to the United Kingdom? What impact has the UK's developing relations with the European Union caused?   As a constitution, it is one that has grown organically in response to changes in the economic, political, and social environment, and which is not contained in a single authoritative text.  By considering the nature and authority of the current British constitution, and placing it in the context of others, Loughlin considers how the traditional idea of a constitution came to be retained, what problems have been generated as a result of adapting a traditional approach in a modern political world, looking at what the future prospects for the British constitution are.


 

Foundations of Public Law (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Foundations of Public Law offers a distinctive, provocative theory of public law, building on the views first outlined in The Idea of Public Law (OUP, 2003). The theory aims to identify the essential character of public law, explain its particular modes of operation, and specify its unique task.


 

The Twilight of Constitutionalism? (Oxford University Press, 2010) (ed. with Petra Dobner)

The concepts and values that underpin traditional constitutionalism are increasingly being challenged by political realities that place substantial power beyond the state. Among the few certainties of a global economy is the growing incongruity between the political (the world of things that need to be ordered collectively in order to sustain society) and the state (the major institution of authoritative political decision-making during modern times). The consequences, and possible remedies, of this double disjunction of politics and state and of state and constitution form the centre of an open debate about 'constitutionalism beyond the state'. The essays gathered in this collection explore the range of issues raised by this debate.


 

The Paradox of Constitutionalism (Oxford University Press, 2007) (ed. with Neil Walker)

The book sets out to examine some of the key features of what we describe as the paradox of constitutionalism: whether those who have the authority to make a constitution - the 'constituent power' - can do so without effectively surrendering that authority to the institutional sites of power 'constituted' by the constitutional form they enact. In particular, is the constituent power exhausted in the single constitutive act or does it retain a presence, acting as a critical check on the constitutional operating system and/or an alternative source of authority to be invoked in moments of crisis? These questions have been debated both in different national contexts and at the level of constitutional theory, and these debates are acknowledged and developed in the first two sections of the book.


 

The Idea of Public Law (Oxford University Press, 2003)

This book offers an answer to the question: what is public law? It suggests that an adequate explanation can only be given once public law is recognized to be an autonomous discipline, with its own distinctive methods and tasks. Martin Loughlin defends this claim by identifying the conceptual foundations of the public law: governing, politics, representation, sovereignty, constituent power, and rights. By explicating these basic elements of the subject, he seeks not only to lay bare its method but also to present a novel account of the idea of public law.


 

Sword and Scales: An Examination of the Relationship between Law and Politics (Hart, 2000)

This work provides a provocative re-assessment of the various tangled relationships between law and politics, and in so doing, examines legal and political thinking on such areas as justice, the state, constitutionalism and rights. It introduces lawyers to certain important themes in some of the key texts of political thought (for example, Plato, Hobbes, Locke and Tocqueville) and introduces political scientists to the legal dimensions of a number of central themes of political studies. The book should be of interest to students and teachers in law and politics.


 

Legality and Locality. The Role of Law in Central-Local Government Relations   (Clarendon Press, 1996)

This book seeks to trace the main dimensions of recent conflicts between central departments of governments and local authorities and to reveal something of their significance. It does so by focusing on the role of law in shaping the central-local government relations which is neglected in many contemporary studies and yet is of vital importance in identifying the character of that relationship. Precisely why they should be so is not self-evident. The main objective of this introduction therefore is to highlight the importance of this dimension to the study of central-local relations and then to explain the way in which the key themes of the study are to be addressed. One highly significant aspect of the study is the identification of a process of juridfication which is only gradually becoming clear. This has not only been a major undertaking, it has also been a highly complex, ambiguous, confusing, and frustrating activity. This has caused problems for government and for the judiciary and not surprisingly there have been expressions of discomfort on all sides. This book helps to explain where the process may have gone wrong and why ultimately it may be an objective which cannot be realised. Ultimately what the book seeks to demonstrate is that the issues raised by the government of central-local relations transcend the institution of local government and are directly linked to our system of parliamentary democracy. Furthermore the author argues that the system of central-local government relations has evolved in such a way that it reveals a great deal about our tradition of public law. An examination of these issues through an explication of the themes of legality and locality therefore requires the reader to address basic questions about the nature of contemporary British government.


 

Public Law and Political Theory (Clarendon Press, 1992)

The study of public law in the UK has been hampered for many years by an inadequate appreciation among scholars and students of the importance of understanding the different political theories which underpin different models of public law. This short and highly readable work offers students a straightforward introduction to the relationship between public law and political theory and helps them to comprehend the rich literature on both subjects.

 

Articles

  • Hague Journal on the Rule of Law (2024)
  • ‘Mapping the Theoretical Turn in British Public Law Scholarship’ (with Samuel Tschorne) in Paul Daly and Joseph Tomlinson (eds)  (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2023), ch.9, 175-2206 [also as ]
  • ‘The British Constitution in Ackerman’s Worldview: A Critique’ in Marco Dani, Marco Goldoni, and Agustin J. Menéndez (eds),  (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2023), ch. 8, 158-176. [this is an open access contribution]
  • ‘Brexit and the British Constitution’ in Thomas Jaeger, Matthias Lehmann, Alexander Somek, Michael Waibel (eds), Consolidating Brexit: The Future of EU/UK Cooperation (Vienna: Sramek Verlag, 2023), 265-283
  • (2023) 24 German Law Journal 623–636
  • ‘The Evolution and Gestalt of the British Constitution’ in Armin von Bogdandy et al (eds), , vol.2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), ch. 14, 689-735.
  • ‘Laski’s Materialist Analysis of the British Constitution’ in Marco Goldoni and Michael A. Wilkinson (eds), (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022), ch.3, 64-75. 2022
  • iCourts Working Paper Series, 309, 2022. IMAGINE Paper No.27, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Nov. 2022
  • ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Legal Studies Working Paper Series 16/2021
  •  (2022) University of Toronto Law Journal 
  •  (2022) OJLS 42 (1) 366-382
  • (2021) 50 Quaderni fiorentini 251-281
  • 'In Search of the Constitution' in Oran Doyle, Aileen McHarg, Jo Murkens eds, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021), ch. 14, 313-335
  • ‘Constitutional Interpretation: What can Europeans learn from US Debates?’ in Fruzsina Orosz and Zoltán Szente (eds),   (London: Routledge, 2021), ch 16, pp. 274-90
  • 'Thinking about the Rule of Law', in Loughlin and Meierhenrich (eds.),  (CUP, 2021), pp. 3-22 (with Jens Meierhenrich)
  • 'Michael Oakeshott’s Republican Theory of the Rule of Law', in Loughlin and Meierhenrich (eds.),  (CUP, 2021), pp. 171-185
  • 'Santi Romano e la teoria istituzionalista del diritto' in Marco Mazzamuto (ed.), Santi Romano: L’ordinamento giuridico (1917-2017): La fortuna della teoria romaniana dell’ordinamento dalla sua pubblicazione ai tempi nostri nelle varie aree disciplinari (Naples: Editorale Scientifica, 2020), 287-306.
  • 'Fundamental Law' in Miguel Nogueira de Brito and Luis Pereira Coutinho (eds), (Berlin: Springer, 2020), Chapter 2
  • 'A Note on Craig on Miller;Cherry' [2020] Public Law 278-81
  • ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law Working Paper Series 19/2019
  • Political Quarterly (2019) Vol.90, 786-93
  • Policy Exchange, October 2019
  • (2019) 30 Kings Law Journal 5-50; working paper is also available: ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law Working Paper Series 18/2017
  • 'The Contemporary Crisis of Constitutional Democracy' (2019) 39 Oxford J of Legal Studies  435-54
  • ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law Working Paper Series 22/2018
  • M.L.R. (2018) 81 (6), 989-1016 (with Stephen Tierney) 
  •  (2018) 16(4) International J. of Constitutional Law  2018, 16(4), 1156-1163
  •  (2018) 16 New Zealand J. of Public & International Law 1-19 ; working paper ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law Working Paper Series 01/2018
  • (2018) 16 (3) International J. of Constitutional Law 2018, 16(3), 922-935.
  • (2018) 89 (4) Political Quarterly, 659-66
  • 'The Historical Method in Public Law' in M Dubber and C Tomlins eds (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), ch.51, 983-999.
  • 'Why read Carl Schmitt?' in C Bezemek, M Potacs and A Somek eds , vol.1 (Oxford: Hart, 2018), ch 3, 49-64.
  • 'Political Jurisprudence' ch.2, pp 15-29 in M Wilkinson and M Dowdle eds. (Oxford: Hart, 2018)
  • 'Excavating Foundations' ch.16, pp.255-75 in M Wilkinson and M Dowdle eds. (Oxford: Hart, 2018)
  • Transnational Legal Theory (2017) 8 (3) pp.353-359
  • in The Max Planck Handbooks in European Public Law, Volume I: The Administrative State Edited by Sabino Cassese, Armin von Bogdandy, Peter Huber. OUP 2017, ch.13
  • ch.7 In Constitutionalism beyond Liberalism (CUP, 2017) Editors: Michael W. Dowdle, Michael A. Wilkinson
  • (2017) History of Political Thought 345-370
  • Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy (2017)
  • (February 2017) No.17 Thinking about Federalism(s)
  • in J. Meierhenrich and O Simons (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), ch21
  • , Jus Politicum: Revue de Droit Politique (July 2016) No.16 Foundations of Public Law
  • 'Sumption’s Assumptions' N Barber, R Ekins & P Yowell (eds), (Oxford: Hart, 2016), 27-43
  • (2015) 10 Frontiers of Law in China 437-448
  • in Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science, Mark Bevir, R. A. W. Rhodes (eds.) (2016) (with Samuel Tschorne)
  • Journal of Constitutional History / Giornale di Storia Costituzionale N. 29 (1). pp. 49-60
  • (2014) 16 Etica & Politics/Ethics & Politics 965-972
  • in  Dyzenhaus and Poole (eds.) Law, Liberty and State: Oakeshott, Hayek and Schmitt on the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
  • 'Habeas corpus, imperial rendition, and the rule of law' Current Legal Problems (2015) 68 (1). pp. 27-84.
  • (2015) 78 Modern law Review 1-25
  • 'The Coalition and the Constitution' in A Selden and M Finn (eds) The Coalition Effect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), ch. 2 pp 59-86 (with Cal Viney).
  • Global Constitutionalism (2014) 3 (1) pp.9-30
  • European Journal of Political Theory (2014) 13 (2) pp.218-237
  • Public Law (2014) pp.56-67
  • 'The Political Jurisprudence of Thomas Hobbes' in D Dyzenhaus & T Poole (eds), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 5-21.
  • 'The Nature of Public Law' in C MacAmlaigh, C Michelon & N Walker (eds), After Public Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 11-24
  • 'Why Sovereignty?' in R Rawlings, P Leyland & A Young (eds), Sovereignty and Law: Domestic, Regional & Global Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
  • Public Law (2010) Oct, 643-654
  • 'In Defence of Staatslehre' (Berlin : Duncker und Humblot) 48 (1) pp. 1-28 (2009)
  • 'Why the History of English Administrative Law is not Written' in D. Dyzenhaus, G. Huscroft & M. Hunt (eds), (Oxford: Hart, 2009), 151-177
  • 'Reflections on The Idea of Public Law' in Christodoulidis and Tierney eds, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 47-68
  • 'Audit, Regulation and Constitutional Modernization' in M. Faure & F. Stephen (eds) Essays in the law and economics of regulation in honour of Anthony Ogus (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2008), 21-36.
  • The Constitutional Thought of the Levellers (2007) (60)
  • 'Constituent Power Subverted: From English Constitutional Argument to British Constitutional Discourse' in M. Loughlin & N. Walker eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 27-48.
  • Grundlagen und Grundzüge staatlichen Verfassungsrechts: Großbritannien A. von Bogdandy, P. Cruz Villalón & P.M. Huber (eds), , vol.1 (Heidelberg: C.F. Müller Verlag, 2007), ch.4, 217-272.
  • (with Gus Van Harten) (2006) 17 (1) European Journal of International Law
  • 'The Positivization of Natural Rights' in G. MacDowell and J. O'Neill (eds) (London: Palgrave, 2006, 57-80.
  • (2006) 26 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 2006 425-437
  • Special issue, Univ. of Toronto LJ (2005), 000-000; co-ed. with H. Arthurs, D. Dyzenhaus & M. Taggart.
  • 2005 Public Law 46-64
  • 'The Functionalist Style in Public Law' (2005) 55 University of Toronto Law Journal 361-403.
  • (2005) 25 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 183-202
  • 2004 European Law Rev. 557-569; reprinted in Vol.7 no.2 German Law J. (Feb. 2006)
  • , P. Dunleavy, H. Margetts, M. Loughlin, S. Bastow, J. Tinkler, O. Pearce and P. Bartholomeou London: The Stationery Office, 9 March 2005, HC 21 Session 2004-5. National Audit Office Value for Money Study, 99 pages
  •  Special Articles Issue, Modern Law Review, (2004) vol.67, no.5, 715-786
  • 'Ten Tenets of Sovereignty' in N. Walker (ed.), (Oxford: Hart, 2003), 55-86
  • 'Constitutional Law: The Third Order of the Political' in N. Bamforth and P. Leyland (eds) (Oxford: Hart, 2003), 27-51
  • 'Representation and Constitutional Theory' in P.P. Craig and R.W. Rawlings (eds), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 47-66
  • 'The Demise of Local Government' in V. Bogdanor (ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 521-556

External activities

Martin sits on the Editorial Boards of: The Modern Law ReviewJournal of Contemporary Legal IssuesJus PoliticumRevue de droit politiqueGiornale di Storia costituzionale/Journal of Constitutional HistoryTeoría y Realidad Constitucional; and the Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law. He is also co-editor of the OUP book series, Oxford Constitutional Theory.

Public engagement

  • Balkinization, 6 July 2023
  •  RevDem 15/03/23
  •  Balkinization 04/03/22
  •  Administrative Law in the Common Law World 28/10/21

Teaching