Cambridge District, Reino Unido
The great Victorian jurist A. V. Dicey saw it as a virtue of the rule of law in England that our constitutional law fundamentally consisted of "the principles of private law". One reason for seeing the dominance of private law as a virtue might be the fact that rights within private law possess peremptory force: once the right has been acknowledged, the need and the scope for further deliberation has more-or-less terminated. Since l 9i.J5, in many jurisdictions around the world, a model of constitutional rights has emerged within which rights lack peremptory force. Constitutional rights on this model are weighty considerations which must be balanced against each other, and against the legitimate objectives of the state. Rather than placing in the hands of the citizen an entitlement that constrains official discretion, constitutional rights seem to license precisely such an exercise of discretion.