The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 states that, after receiving a certificate of ‘gender recognition’ by the state,
[a] person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).
Contrast this with one of the most famous lines from An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution by A.V. Dicey, first published in 1885:
It is a fundamental principle with English lawyers that Parliament can do everything but make a woman a man, and a man a woman.
The contrast between these two passages illustrates one of the great ironies of modern jurisprudence. It used to be a fundamental principle that Parliament could do everything but make a woman a man, and a man a woman. But then we had the Gender Recognition Act (which was provoked by a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in July 2002). So now Parliament can make a woman a man, and a man a woman.
Now, what I want to point out about this is that it is a matter of law. Legislation was passed in 2004, following the United Kingdom losing a case before the European Court of Human Rights in 2002, a case which depended on articles of the European Convention on Human Rights originally signed in 1950 by all members of the Council of Europe and brought into force in 1953. Therefore it was a change in law which was behind all of the current debates about ‘trans’ issues; and, also to be noted is the significant fact that the change in law was demanded by a European court.
II
Dicey was not responsible for the line I have quoted. He called it a “grotesque expression which has become almost proverbial” and he attributed to J.L. de Lolme, a Genevan writer of the late 18th Century, whose book The Constitution of England; in which it is compared with the republican form of government, and the other monarchies in Europe was first published in English in 1775, and again in an enlarged edition in 1784 (where Dicey found the line). Dicey was using de Lolme’s expression to illustrate a principle summarised in William Blackstone’s Commentaries, but of much older provenance: the principle that Parliament “can do everything that is not naturally impossible”.
Chapter X of The Constitution of England is a technical account of the contrast between English writs and Roman actiones legis. But, along the way, de Lolme claimed that the relative strictness of the English system – writs could only be authorised by a court invested with the appropriate powers, which meant, ultimately, Parliament, whereas actiones legis could be authorised by any judge or praetor – meant that English law had depended for a long time on ‘legal fictions’ in order to maintain its necessary flexibility. But de Lolme conceded that Roman lawyers too had made use of legal fictions. “Law fictions… were not unknown to the old Roman jurisconsults; and as an instance of their ingenuity in that respect may be mentioned that kind of action in which a daughter was called a son.” And he qualified this observation with a footnote:
From the above instance it might be concluded that the Roman jurisconsults possessed still greater power than the English Parliament; for it is a fundamental principle with the English jurists, that Parliament can do every thing, except making a woman a man, or a man a woman.
In the original French: c’est un principe Fondamental chez les gens de robe de ce pays-la, que le parlement peut tout, excepté faire une femme d’un homme; & vice versa.
De Lolme was an 18th-Century writer, hence ironical. Irony had disappeared by the time of Dicey, and has not yet returned amongst even the legal authorities who would now think Dicey the one guilty of grotesquery.
III
Law is an elaborate confection or construction which runs parallel to life, seems derivative of it, imposes order on it, but is separate from it. If life is where we find fact then law is where we find fiction. ‘Guilty!’ and ‘Not guilty!’ are fictions. So is ‘the Crown’, and ‘the State’, and many other corporations which only exist by legal fiction: the BBC, for instance, and the Universities. Even ‘the Law’ itself, when considered with the most Machiavellian or Augustinian eye, is something of a fiction. Now, it is common for ‘law fictions’ to be used in relation to a body politic, i.e., a corporation. But it is not common for ‘law fictions’ to be used in relation to a body natural, i.e. of an individual human soul.
Even Roman jurisconsults would not have thought that a daughter who could be a son by fiction could be a son in fact.
For the first time in human history, as far as I know, the body natural of the individual human has been separated from what we could call the body politic of the same individual human. At one and the same time a human may be naturally or, we may say, originally (or, as they say, inverting reality, ‘assigned’), male, and legally or, we may say, finally, female – and vice versa. And the interesting thing is such law is pressed so hard that certain activists are campaigning hard for law to trump nature: so that, in effect, our bodies politic will become not only the bodies recognised by law but also the only bodies there are. This will be to live in a world where, as de Lolme puts it, “writs, being warped from their actual meaning, [will be] made to extend to cases to which they in no shape belong”. This is a world in which law will be used to turn fiction into fact – by force.
In the last few years the activists have been trying to change the Gender Recognition Act so that it will be enough to identify oneself as the other sex. In September 2020 the United Kingdom Government decided not to allow people to change sex simply because they wanted to fictionalise themselves. So there are still limits to the willingness of the state to allow fictions by law to be substituted for natural facts.
But one can see why there is nothing in our respect for law which enables us to resist such a substitution. It is only by limiting law and insisting that it remains within its own boundaries that we can hold onto facts. It is no wonder Starmer had so much difficulty with his definition of a woman. He is a lawyer, and, as such, lives in a world of legal fiction, not fact.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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What I’ve learnt about them is that they were well worth avoiding, especially w.r.t. the way they were marketed.
Remember
As many of you know, four weeks from today, in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court of England, shall be heard:
The King on the application of Mark Steyn
vs
The Office of Communications
What is it
Britain and indeed the world owe Doctors Heneghan and Jefferson a huge debt for putting themselves front and centre in this battle with the anti human forces behind big pharma. I remember the early days when these good men were the very essence of politeness and restraint, now, quite rightly the gloves are off.
God bless them both.
Even though it has been more than four years since the start of “covid”, and fair while since “covid” was “over”, I cannot fathom the enormity of what was done, and the lack of interest most people show in it to this day. Articles like this really bring this home to me. Monstrous.
With you on that tof.
It’s almost like every morning I wake up and wonder if it was all a bad dream. I will never get my head round it.
That is pretty much where I am. I lay in bed this morning and couldn’t help but think “what have the youngsters got in front of them?”
It looks to me as if Orwell’s ‘1984’ is a real possibility within a barbaric muslim nightmare. I don’t see a future of hope I see a future of violence, depression and drudgery. Bleak. Very bleak.
It can seem like that
I just try to take care of me and mine and don’t give the bastards the satisfaction
I will never forget and never forgive. I want the guilty men and women treated the same way the Nazis were at Nuremberg.
A nightmare, like you and Hux, just cannot get my head around what happened and how it happened.
I though we Brits had something about us, the Bulldog spirit is dead and gone.
I thought we would be what Sweden were, and I thought Sweden would act like we did!
Something is seriously broken in the British psyche, it is a dead psyche it is no more!
I’d read into disaster planning and dystopian end times, but just never saw it coming. When the CMO’s of the British nations announced on 19th March 2020 the reduction from HCID I honestly that was it, we would be scaling back the rhetoric and the scaremongering, and calling out Neil Ferguson as the charlatan he clearly was – how very wrong I was!
I even naively believed that the NHS existed to save us!
I regret nothing I did in resisting the madness, but friendships have been lost!
I’m yet to regret not getting the vax that’s not a vax, and still strongly believe I made the right call, and will be vindicated.
Ditto !
https://youtu.be/BnTjmSv8VNo?si=88jzHda1vOoA1W5C
Paul Weston on YouTube with the perfect accompaniment to this article. Lots of Abduls on the take – literally.
A sincere thank you for all the hard work you have done over the last 3-4 years re the “pandemic” etc and for your work prior to that in trying to extol the benefits, nay necessity, of evidence based medicine.
I look forward to seeing Carl appearing on the BBC soon – no doubt shortly after the Guardian has invited him to write a series of articles criticising lockdowns, masks, school closures, social distancing, modified RNA and their untested lipid nanoparticles, the dangers of mass vaccination etc. etc.
That said, remember he’s up against luminaries such as the writer of this tripe –
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/11/astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-jab-coronavirus-saved-lives-humanitarian-crises
According to the author of the linked Guardian article the AZ “vaccine” saved 6.3 million lives in 2021 alone. Later in the article we get this…
“We only know those who were harmed by it but cannot pinpoint those who benefited.
Again, this makes it trickier to pinpoint a vaccine’s success and assure people of its efficacy.”
But they were able to pinpoint efficacy to 6.3 million lives. This Robin Mickie is quite frankly a dangerous liar.