by Stanley de Smith
Professor of Public Law
In the University of London
Constitutional guarantees of human rights and freedoms have traditionally been scorned in Britain, from the time of Bentham's tirades against the Declaration of Rights. Yet within the last five years they have been applied to a number of British dependencies and have formed a live, even crucial, issue in the new constitutions of Nigeria, Kenya, the Rhodesias, and elsewhere.
What accounts for this complete change in British policy, and what does such entrenchment achieve that the law of the land cannot?