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PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSTITUTIONALISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2010

Dawn Oliver
Dawn Oliver
Affiliation:
Professor of Constitutional Law, University College London.
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The Cambridge Law Journal , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , November 2010 , pp. 639 - 675
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Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 2010

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References

1 For discussion of what is in the public interest (what its content is) and how it is to be determined (e.g. by deliberation), see for instance B.M. Barry “The Use and Abuse of the Public Interest” in C.J. Friedrich (ed.), Nomos V: The Public Interest (New York 1962); V. Held The Public Interest and Individual Interests (New York 1970); C. Sunstein After the Rights Revolution: Reconceiving the Regulatory State (Cambridge Mass. 1990); M. Feintuck The Public Interest in Regulation (Oxford 2004).

2 P. Laslett (ed. Cambridge 2003), second treatise chapter XI, para. 136. My italics.

3 E. Burke “speech to the Electors of Bristol”, 3 November 1774. My italics.

4 (London 1977), pp. 82–3. My italics.

5 For discussion of the psychology of acculturation of immigrants into their “host” community and acceptance of immigrants by host communities see Van Oudenhoven, J.P. and others, “Patterns of relations between immigrants and host societies” in (2006) 30 International Journal of Intercultural Relations, pp. 637–651CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oudenhoven, Van and others, “Attitudes of minority and majority members towards adaptation of immigrants” (1998) 28 European Journal of Social Psychology pp. 995–10133.0.CO;2-8>CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D.L. Sam and J.W. Berry (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Acculturatation Psychology (Cambridge 2006), chapters 11 (Van Oudenhoven and others) and 23 (L. Robinson).

6 L. Duguit Law and the Modern State, (New York 1919), p. 44.

7 Reported in The Guardian: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/12/coalition-government-seven-page-pact. It is usual for newly appointed Prime Ministers to assert their commitment to the service of the whole country.

8 The importance of Cameron's references to co-operation and compromise are discussed in Part II of this article.

9 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/4/newsid_2503000/2503195.stm.

10 R. v. Somerset County Council, ex parte Fewings [1995] 3 All E.R. 20.

11 [1964] A.C. 763.

12 [1985] Crim. L.R. 319.

13 For discussion see N. MacCormick Questioning Sovereignty (Oxford 1999), chapter 3.

14 [2008] UKHL 60, at para. 53. This case is discussed further below.

15 See further discussion of this case below.

16 See P. Gutiérrez de Cabiedes e Hidalgo de Caviedes La tutela jurisdiccional de los intereses supraindividuales colectivos y difusos (Navarra 1999), p. 55. I am grateful to Javier Oliva for this information.

17 I am grateful to George Letsas for this information.

18 G.J. Leenknegt, “Artikel 50” in A.K. Koekkoek (ed.), De Grondwet. Een systematisch en artikelsgewijs commentaar (Deventer 2000), at p. 332.

19 Kamerstukken II, 2003–2004, 29 436, pp. 6–7. I am grateful to Gijsbert ter Kuile for providing this information about Dutch constitutional arrangements.

20 [2001] UKHL 67.

21 [1968] A.C. 997.

22 [2008] UKHL 60.

23 Ibid. at para. 53. My italics.

24 Section 7 sets out the “Minimum requirements for civil service and diplomatic service codes” as follows:

  1. (1)

    (1) This section sets out the provision that must be included in a civil service code or the diplomatic service code in relation to the civil servants covered by the code. (The code may include other provision as well.)

  2. (2)

    (2) The code must require civil servants who serve an administration mentioned in subsection (3) to carry out their duties for the assistance of the administration as it is duly constituted for the time being, whatever its political complexion.

  3. (3)

    (3) The administrations are—

    1. (a)

      (a) Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom;

    2. (b)

      (b) the Scottish Executive;

    3. (c)

      (c) the Welsh Assembly Government.

  4. (4)

    (4) The code must require civil servants to carry out their duties—

    1. (a)

      (a) with integrity and honesty, and

    2. (b)

      (b) with objectivity and impartiality.

  5. (5)

    (5) But the code need not require special advisers (see section 15) to carry out their duties with objectivity or impartiality.

25 Sections 1–4.

26 Cm. 2850, 1995.

27 2010. See www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/409215/ministerialcodemay2010.pdf at Annex A.

28 See Erskine May Parliamentary Practice, 23rd ed. (London 2004), ch. 8.

29 See for instance the case of W.J. Brown 118 HC Deb., and 440 HC Deb., col. 284 (1946–7).

30 See for instance M. Bateson, D. Nettle and G. Roberts, “Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting” (2006, Royal Society) Biol Lett. 2006 September 22; 2(3) at www.pubmedcentral.nih..gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=16862.

31 See Committee on Standards in Public Life Survey of public attitudes towards conduct in public life 2008. The public outrage at revelations of MPs' misuse of expenses in the summer of 2009 provides an illustration of public attitudes to selfishness and public service.

32 See for instance M. Bateson, D. Nettle and G. Roberts, note 31 above.

33 It is notable that by no means all MPs had abused their expenses: many of them fulfilled the requirements of the public service principle and had not taken advantage of system. The culture of public service had won against the predisposition to selfishness in those cases.

34 J. Bell, S. Boyron and S. Whittaker Principles of French Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford 2008), pp. 168–176; see also J. Bell French Administrative Law, 5th ed. (Oxford 1998), pp. 129–135.

35 See Estatuto Básico del Empleado Público 2007 – The Basic Law on Public Employment.

36 I am grateful to Javier Oliva for this information.

37 Kamerstukken 11, 2003–2004, 29 436, pp. 6–7. Again, I am grateful to Gijsbert ter Kuile for information about Dutch constitutional arrangements.

38 Readable introductions for those new to the subject include: L. Workman and W. Reader, Evolutionary Psychology. An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Cambridge 2008); J. Cartwright, Evolution and Human Behaviour. Darwinian Perspectives on Human Nature, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke 2008); D.M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology. The New Science of the Mind 3rd ed. (London 2008); R. Dunbar and L. Barrett The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (Oxford 2007); D.M. Buss (ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (Hoboken NJ 2005); L. Barrett, R. Dunbar and J. Lycett, Human Evolutionary Psychology (Basingstoke 2002); P.H. Rubin, Darwinian Politics: The evolutionary origin of freedom (Piscataway NJ 2002); M. Ridley The Origins of Virtue (London 1996).

39 See “Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology” in Buss (ed.), Handbook, note 38 above, at pp. 5–6.

40 J.A. Simpson and L. Campbell “Methods of evolutionary sciences” in Buss (ed.), Handbook, op. cit. at p. 120.

41 L. Workman and W. Reader, Evolutionary Psychology, note 38 above, at p. 28.

42 D. Buss, (ed.), Handbook, op. cit., at pp. 5–6.

43 G. Marcus, Kluge: The haphazard construction of the human mind (Boston 2008).

44 See K.N. Laland and G.R. Brown, Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary perspectives on human behaviour (Oxford 2002) for accounts of the methodologies of these evolutionary approaches.

45 See W.L. Twining, Jurisprudence (Cambridge 2009), chapter 16.5, accessible via www.cambridge.org/twining.

46 L. Cosmides and J. Tooby, “Evolutionary psychology, moral heuristics, and the law” in G. Gigerenzer and C. Engel (eds.), Heuristics and the Law (Cambridge Mass. 2006).

47 S. Pinker, The Blank Slate (London 2002), chapter 9. This article does not engage with issues as to what is or is not morally good, but the literature with which I am concerned here obviously has important implications for moral philosophy and the assumptions within it about human nature.

48 See generally P.J. Richerson and R. Boyd, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (Chicago 2005).

49 The term “meme” was coined by R. Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (Oxford 1976). The Oxford English Dictionary definition of a meme is “An element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means”. See D.C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell (London 2006), Appendix A “The New Replicators”; and Laland and Brown, Sense and Nonsense, note 44 above, chapter 6.

50 Edwards, J., “Evolutionary psychology and politics” (2003) Economy and Society vol. 32, number 2 May 2003, 280–298CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 290. See also P.H. Rubin Darwinian Politics, note 38 above.

51 The term “Groupishness” was coined by Ridley in The Origins of Virtue, note 39 above, at pp. 39–40, 179. Weaknesses in groupishness and sociability/sociality may be the sources of current concerns about citizens having responsibilities as well as rights. “Responsibility” in lawyers' and politicians' language may translate into “sociability/sociality” which operates within groups in the language of sociology and psychology.

52 I am grateful to Robert Layton for this insight into groupishness. See E. Wyman and M. Tomasello “The ontogenetic origins of human cooperation” and M. Van Vugt, G. Roberts and C. Hardy “Competitive altruism: A theory of reputation-based cooperation in groups” in R. Dunbar and L. Barrett, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, note 39 above, chapters 17 and 36.

53 See for instance H. Gintis, S. Bowles, R. Boyd and E. Fehr in Dunbar and Barrett, eds., note 38 above.

54 See also discussions of altruism and reciprocal altruism, below.

55 See e.g. R. Kurzban and S. Neuberg, “Managing ingroup and outgroup relationships” in D.M. Buss (ed.), Handbook, note 38 above, pp. 653–669.

56 See R. Kurzban, J. Tooby and L. Cosmides “Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization” www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/papers/eraserace.pdf No doubt we can all think of ways in which this happens in UK politics and how constitutional rules respond to them – notions of parliamentary and unparliamentary language and differential dress codes – tie colour and pattern, for instance – spring immediately to my mind.

57 See later discussion in this article of otherization and negative stereotypes.

58 See discussion of Tit for tat in the next section of this article.

59 See Edwards, J., “Evolutionary psychology and politics” (2003) Economy and Society vol. 32, number 2 May 2003, 280–298CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for discussion of the relevance of Tit for tat theory to politics and evolutionary psychology; see also the discussion under the heading “Altruism and patronage” below.

60 One hundred and fifty may have been the maximum size of human communities at the time that the groupishness predisposition evolved.

61 See R. Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York 2006), and, with W.D. Hamilton “The evolution of cooperation” (1981) Science 11, 1390–6. Tit for tat theory is complex and there is not the space to go into it in any detail here.

62 Dunbar, R., “Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates” (1992) Journal of Human Evolution 22: 469–493CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and.Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (London 1996); see also M. Gladwell, The Tipping Point – How Little Things Make a Big Difference (London 2001), pp. 177–181, 185–186.

63 I am grateful to Oliver Curry for putting this so neatly.

64 See discussion in R. Layton, Order and Anarchy (Cambridge 2006), chapter 2. Some local education authorities in England have decided to allocate school places to children by lot to secure fair allocations.

65 On conformist bias see P.J. Richerson and R. Boyd Not by Genes Alone, note 48 above, chapter 4. The tale of The Emperor's New Clothes provides an illustration of conformism.

66 H. Simon, “A mechanism for social selection of successful altruism” (1990) Science, 250, 1665–8.

67 Dunbar, R., “Gossip in evolutionary perspective” (1994) General Review of Psychology 8, 100–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Dunbar, R., “Coevolution of neo-cortal size, group size and language in humans” (1993) Behavioural and Brain Science, 16, 681–735CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Emler, N., “A social psychology of reputation” (1990) European Review of Social Psychology, 1, 171–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Gossip, reputation and social adaptation” in R. Goodman et al. (eds.), Good Gossip (Kansas 1994).

70 R. Dunbar, “Groups, gossip and the evolution of language” in A. Schmitt et al. (eds.), New Aspects of Human Ethology (New York 1997), pp. 77–90.

71 Enquist, M. and Limar, O., “The evolution of cooperation in mobile organisms” (1993) Animal Behaviour 45, 747–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Stone, V.E., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Kroll, N. and Knight, R.T., “selective impairment of reasoning about social exchange in a patient with bilateral limbic system damage” (2002) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 11531–11536CrossRefGoogle Scholar (noted in Buss, Handbook, note 39 above, at p. 275), for evidence of specific cheater-detection adaptations in humans. Do we observe gossip to be influential in British politics?

72 Cm 4534, 2000.

73 See D. Feldman (2002) “Parliamentary scrutiny of legislation and human rights” [2002] Public Law 323.

74 See J.M. Rabbie, “The effects of intragroup cooperation and intergroup competition on in-group cohesion and out-group hostility” in A.H. Harcourt and F.B.M. de Waal (eds.), Coalitions and Alliances in Human and Other Animals (Oxford 1992), pp. 175–205.

75 M. Sherif, Group Conflict and Cooperation: Their social psychology (London 1967); Tajfel, H.L., “Experiments in intergroup discrimination” (1970) Scientific American, 223, 96–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Differentiation Between Social Groups (London 1978); M.B. Brewer and W.D. Crano, Social Psychology (New York 1994).

76 This tendency has been influential in the work of theorists such as Carl Schmitt who distinguished between “friend” and “enemy” in 1932 in The Concept of the Political (Chicago 2007). The fact that such tendencies can be used to develop anti-democratic and anti-human rights theories does not of itself invalidate the evidence that these tendencies exist as innate human predispositions or the conclusion that they are bad and maladaptive in contemporary societies and ought to be subordinated to positive principles.

77 K. Taylor (2009) Cruelty: Human Evil and Human Brain (Oxford 2009).

78 E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge Mass. 1975).

79 For anthropological evidence of the importance of trade and exchange see also P. Wiessner, “Taking the risk out of risky transactions: a forager's dilemma” in F.K. Salter, ed. Risky Transactions, Kinship, Ethnicity and Trust (Oxford 2002), pp. 21–43. On trade and exchange generally, see M. Ridley (1996) The Origins of Virtue, note 39 above, chapter 10, and The Rational Optimist (London 2010), chapter 2. Ridley gives the development of the lex mercatoria as an example of the importance of mutual trust and reciprocity to the development of trade and good relations between individuals or groups, and of the effectiveness of ostracism as a reaction to breach of trust.

80 N. Chagnon. Yanomamo. The fierce people (New York 1983). This observation sheds interesting light on the motivations for the formation of the European Economic Communities after the Second World War: the creation of a common market and fair trade within it were primarily designed to prevent violent conflict/war.

81 note 8 above.

82 H. Gintis, S. Bowles, R. Boyd and E. Fehr, “Explaining altruistic behaviour in humans” in R. Dunbar and L. Barrett, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, note 39 above, chapter 42.

83 Hamilton, W.D., “The genetic evolution of social behaviour” (1964) Journal of Theoretical Biology 7, 1–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 See R. Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, note 62 above, and, with Hamilton, W.D., “The evolution of cooperation” (1981) Science 11, at 1390Google Scholar–6.

85 See Trivers, R.L., “The evolution of reciprocal altruism” (1971) Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Social Evolution (Wokingham 1985).

86 R. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems (New York 1987); J. Alcock, Animal Behaviour: An Evolutionary Approach (Sunderland MA 2005).

87 New Testament Gospel of St Luke chapter 10, verses 30–37.

88 See D. Cummins (2005) “Dominance, status and social hierarchies” in D.M. Buss, Handbook, note 39 above, pp. 676–693.

89 See discussion of work by M. Bateson, D. Nettle and G. Roberts (2006) “Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting”, note 31 above.

90 See for instance W.A. Niskanen, Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago 1971); J. Buchanan, The Inconsistencies of the National Health Service (London 1965).

91 D.W. Pfaff, The neuroscience of fair play: Why we (usually) follow the golden rule (Chicago 2008).

92 C. Gearty “Human rights after Darwin: Is a General Theory of Human Rights now possible?” (unpublished lecture delivered at the London School of Economics on 7 May 2009).

93 J. Panksepp, “The neuroevolutionary and neuroaffective psychobiology of the prosocial brain” in Dunbar and Barrett, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, note 38 above, chapter 12.

94 See Panksepp, op. cit.

95 P.J. Zak, Moral Markets: The critical role of values in the economy (Princeton 2008); P.J. Zak, A.A. Stanton and S. Ahmadi, “Oxytocin Increases Generosity in Humans” (2007) Public Library of Science One 2(11): e1128. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001128.

96 See Pfaff, note 92 above; and R. Trivers, Social Evolution (Wokingham 1985), at pp. 387–9; Henrich, J. et al. “Costly punishment across human societies” (2006) Science, 312: 1767–1770CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

97 Thornhill, R., Fincher, C.L. and Aran, D., “Parasites, democratization, and the liberalization of values across contemporary countries” (2009 ) Biological Reviews 84:113–131CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; C.L. Fincher and R. Thornhill, “Assortive sociality, limited dispersal, infectious disease, and the genesis of global pattern of religious diversity” (2008) Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 275: 2587–2594.

98 See C. McCrudden, “Northern Ireland and the British Constitution” in J. Jowell and D. Oliver (eds.), The Changing Constitution, 6th ed. (Oxford 2007); P. Dixon Northern Ireland: The politics of war and peace (2nd edn. Basingstoke 2008); B. O'Leary and J. McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland (Atlantic Highlands, NJ 1992); J. Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford 1990); D. Birrell and A. Murie, Policy and Government in Northern Ireland: Lessons of Devolution (Dublin 1980).

99 See Whyte, 1990, op. cit., chapter 9. Whyte considers other, exogenous explanations as well. For a psychological approach to Northern Ireland see M. Fraser, Children in Conflict (Harmondworth 1973).

100 K. Boyle and T. Haddon, Ireland: A Positive Proposal (London 1985), at p. 53.

101 For brief accounts of the two narratives see P. Dixon, note 98 above, pp. 6–13 (Nationalist views) and pp. 13–17 (Unionist views).

102 See work by Wilson and Taylor under the subheading “Outsiders, otherization and negative stereotypes” by note 78 above.

103 See P. Dixon, note 98 above, “Introduction”.

104 Reviewed in Dixon, P., “Why the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland is not Consociational” (2005), 76 Political Quarterly 357–367CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 The Belfast Agreement: An Agreement Reached at the Multi-Party Talks on Northern Ireland, April 10, 1998, Cm 3883 (1998).

106 Supra, at page 2.

107 See O'Leary and McGarry, note 98 above, chapter 3.

108 See Kurzban and Neuberg, note 55 above, at p. 665.

109 See R. Kurzban and S. Neuberg, note 55 above, and discussion under the heading “Groupishness”, also above.

110 See for instance J. Whyte, “How much discrimination was there under the Unionist regime 1921–68?” in T. Gallagher and J. O'Connell (eds.), Contemporary Irish Studies (Manchester 1983).

111 See Dixon, note 98 above, chapter 3.

112 See D. Birrell and A. Murie, note 98 above, at p. 65. Of course this is sometimes the position in the UK, but Great Britain has been spared the problem of a population divided into two mutually exclusive and incompatible communities.

113 See the work of J.M. Rabbie “The effects of intragroup cooperation and intergroup competition on in-group cohesion and out-group hostility” in A.H. Harcourt and F.B.M. de Waal (eds.), Coalitions and Alliances in Human and Other Animals, note 74 above, 175–205, discussed above.

114 See discussion under the heading “Negotiation, exchange and trade” above, and M. Ridley The Rational Optimist, note 79 above, chapter 2.

115 See O'Leary and McGarry, note 98 above. For discussion of how such concerns were resolved in the Netherlands despite ethno-religious divisions, see A. Lijphart (1968) The Politics of Accommodation (Berkeley CA 1968).

116 See works referred to in note 98 above.

117 See O'Leary and McGarry, note 98 above, chapters 3 and 4.

118 On the peace process generally see J. Powell, Great Hatred, Little Room (London 2008).

119 See www.psni.police.uk.

120 See discussion by McCrudden, note 98 above, at pp. 251–2.

121 Agreement, note 105 above, Constitutional Issues, 1(v).

122 McCrudden, note 98 above, at page 230.

123 note 98 above, chapter 3.

124 But see, for instance, M. Hauser, Moral Minds (London 2006), for discussion of the work of J. Rawls and David Hume in relation to neuroscience; R. Layton Order and Anarchy, note 64 above, on Hobbes, Locke; S. Pinker in The Blank Slate, note 47 above on evolutionary psychology and John Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, I. Kant; D.C. Dennett in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Evolution and the Meaning of Life (London 1995) on Locke, Hume and Hobbes; M. Ridley, The Origins of Virtue, note 38 above, chapter 13 for discussion of the relationship between evolutionary psychology and the work of Hobbes, Adam Smith, Rousseau, David Hume.