High Court Doesn’t Care If the People Want Brexit

Striking a blow against popular sovereignty by referendum, the U.K. High Court of Justice held Thursday that Britain can’t leave the European Union without an act of Parliament. Because British constitutional thought is so different from its U.S. and European equivalents, the decision will be difficult for the U.K.’s Supreme Court to overturn. It’s now much more likely than not that the courts will save Britain from its ill-conceived Brexit vote. The people may have spoken -- but the court said that wasn’t good enough.

The remarkable decision was reached under the British constitution, which the court pointed out “is not to be found entirely in a written document.” That’s an understatement. Some of U.K. constitutional law comes in the form of statutes, and some of it, as the court said, in the form of “fundamental rules of law” that are “recognized by both Parliament and the courts.” The High Court found the fundamental constitutional principle that decided the case in an academic treatise first published in 1885 and last edited by the author in 1915: A.V. Dicey’s “An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution.”