Rights and the Ideal Constitution

The Reith Lectures

BBC

Society & Culture, Science, Government, Technology

4.2 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2019

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jonathan Sumption assesses the US and UK’s constitutional models. He describes Britain's unwritten constitution as a political institution. The US Constitution is by contrast essentially a legal document. This has led Americans to address what should be political questions – such as the right to abortion – via the courts, rather than through politics. Britain, Lord Sumption argues, should learn from the United States be careful about which rights should be put beyond democratic choice.

The programme is recorded in front of an audience at George Washington University in Washington DC.

The Reith Lectures are presented and chaired by Anita Anand and produced by Jim Frank. Editor: Hugh Levinson

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.
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0:10.8	The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.
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0:22.4	helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put
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0:35.0	check out BBC Sounds.
0:41.2	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:48.5	Welcome to the 2019 BBC Reith Lectures with the former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumpchin.
0:53.1	In his series, he's exploring the complex relationship between politics and the law.
0:56.1	In this fourth podcast, Lord Sumpchin compares the written constitution of the United States with the unwritten one of the United Kingdom.
1:06.3	Welcome to Washington, D.C. and the fourth BBC Reith Lecture with the former UK Supreme Court
1:11.9	Judge Jonathan Sumpion. We're at George Washington University, home to 26,000 students. Former alumni
1:19.4	include Jacqueline Kennedy Anassis and the former director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. In his series,
1:26.4	Jonathan has been interrogating the complex relationship between
1:30.5	politics and the law, suggesting that the courts have become too powerful. Now he compares the
1:37.1	constitutional models of the US and the UK. This lecture is called Rights and the Ideal
1:43.4	Constitution. Please welcome the BBC 2019 Reith Lecturer Jonathan Sumpchin.
1:50.0	When the French political writer Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s,
2:03.6	one of the things that struck him most forcibly was the dominant place occupied by lawyers
2:10.6	in the public life of the nation. In his classic account of early American democracy, the Tockfield suggested that lawyers as a class
2:20.7	had succeeded to the beliefs and influence of the old-landed aristocracy. They shared its habits,
	...

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